Rocco Commisso was in Calabria last Sunday on vacation at his beach house talking about Fiorentina and building them a new stadium for them. I doubt he cares much about what happens with the Cosmos..
Probably, I can see him getting that over two seasons. Certainly the team behaved like he was worth it, Gio said the signing was a "game changer" (It wasn't). Especially when you had David Villa take up all the air and media attention in the area. What would have been a game changer was them getting approval to build the elmont soccer stadium. That never happened and they floundered in LI until they moved to Brooklyn and then the league went belly up.
He was at the Fiorentina v Torino match, along with his entourage. When Italy decided to lock Americans out of traveling there, did they grant special exemptions for rich people? That Des Moines Menace/Kum & Go owner just bought Parma Calcio.
Des Moines Menace/Kum & Go owner just bought Parma?. Maybe he can bail out former owner and Parmalat fraud Calisto Tanzi out of jail?
I know right? Hopefully he doesn't pull a Mike Piazza, Parma cannot afford another bankruptcy. "Ciao, I'm @Kyle_J_Krause and I'm excited to make this announcement..." The first words of Parma Calcio 1913's new President 🎙️🇺🇲⤵️#WelcomeKyle #ForzaParma 💛💙 pic.twitter.com/SwUV0LIw4B— Parma Calcio 1913 (@ParmaCalcio_en) September 18, 2020 (don't look into his eyes)
Just be glad it's him, and not his brother Kevin. If you look at my avatar, you see the A ball team that Kevin almost ran into the ground. As one front office member put it, "If you give him two reasonable options to choose from, he will inevitably choose a third, completely insane option."
You are not wrong on that, but it would have been a "game changer" type of move. The main reason it didn't get built were the cold feet the LI politicians got after seeing the paltry crowds that came to Uniondale. They weren't going to approve them and started courting other bidder to come in (first a casino then the Isles).
I mean was moving 9 miles to a stadium with one part-time station going to increase attendances from 3,000 to 20k+.
I think @Paul Berry is right on target here. You can say the LI pols chickened out if you want, but from where I sit they got it exactly right. I didn't drop 20 bucks on a lottery ticket last night when I got gas. Was that chickening out or was it the smart, reasonable thing to do? Suppose the proposed neoCosmos stadium had gotten built. Having a nice place to play near NYC would not have saved that league. So who exactly would the Mo's be playing there in 2020? No, if the commission had green lighted that project it would be sitting there today empty and unused and the loans defaulted on and ESDC stuck with the maintenance bills and as Paul said "a white elephant". If the Cosmos Redux were in MLS, it would have been an easy sell; the place would be open for business today in all it's Pele nostalgia shirt glory. Nobody has more contempt for politicians than I do but in this case time has proven them correct.
Of course its a hypothetical but if the stadium had gotten built, its a sure bet that New York City FC will have used or bought it.
Would it be empty tho? While you're absolutely correct about everything else, I suspect that NYCFC would be playing in the stadium. There is no way that NYC politicians would approve a stadium in NYC with an empty stadium on LI. Although, I highly doubt the stadium would have been built even after it got approved. The team would have gone bankrupt well before the stadium finished construction.
It's called AMBITION, something you Gulati/Garber closed franchise system jock-sniffers wouldn't know anything about
Location, location, location. Considering most New Yorker City dwellers don't have cars it would be a pain in the arse to get to. Worse than JFK. YS is served by several subway lines, a mainline train, multiple busses and is full of bars and restaurants. Belmont Park is served by one part-time station almost an hour from Times Square and bereft of places to eat and drink. If lack of public transit and places to drink wasn't an issue there wouldn't be a NYCFC and RBA would be heaving.
I'm not saying it would be a good location. Just that NYCFC wouldn't exactly have much of an option, outside of staying at YS. They are already struggling to get a stadium approved as it is, it would be infinitely harder to get a stadium approved if there were an empty stadium on LI.