Photo by nickel.media

Ah the never ending fun of MLS expansion talk.  Because no league can have an odd number of teams, speculation over who will be the 20th MLS team is always a source of debate and discussion for U.S. soccer fans.  Everyone assumes that the New York Cosmos will be the newest MLS franchise and, if I was a betting man, I’d put some cash down on that idea.  However, there are still some issues to be worked out between MLS and the Cosmos ownership, including stadium location and entrance fee.

So, to keep the fans interested, MLS is visiting other cities to raise their hopes that, even if they are not #20, they could be #21 or #22 (or, dare we say #23 or #24?).  The next stop on their tour is the city of Orlando, which has a USL team already but would offer a number of major advantages.  Orlando is a huge meetings and convention city, thus ensuring visitors could help fill the stadium.  They would be the only MLS franchise in Florida and essentially the only one in the South except for the two Texas franchises.  The negative, of course, is the failure of the two previous MLS teams in Florida but that has not stopped the league from trying to take a second look at the state.

“While New York City remains the league’s focus for our 20th club, it’s important to continue evaluating future options as we continue to grow the league,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in a statement. “This growth has been built on a foundation of strategic expansion strategies, construction of new urban-based stadiums and a growing passionate soccer fan base across North America.”

For those interested in convincing the league of the value of an MLS franchise in the city, Garber will first meet with Orlando’s elected leadership as well as the owners of Orlando City.  They will undoubtedly discuss expansion of the team’s grounds, support for a top-flight soccer franchise, and potential revenue from a promotion or rebranding of the current team.  Garber will also be meeting with the public and fans at Mojo Cajun Bar beginning at 12:30 (doors open at 11:30) to gauge local support.

What do you think?  Would Orlando make a good 20th or 21st MLS franchise?

Not even 24 hours after crowning its champion, MLS was back to business by requiring its clubs to list its protected players for the expansion draft.  The expansion draft is just one of several drafts taking place this offseason for MLS, and the unprotected list for this draft has some interesting names.  Most notably is the number of designated players left unprotected – seven, which is two more than the number protected by clubs.  But since no club has yet to win an MLS Cup with a DP, maybe this is not surprising.

You can see the entire list of players here.  The unprotected players can be sorted by a few general categories:

Designated Players – Not David Beckham, but some of the lesser name DPs have been left unprotected.  Some are disappointments that the club is looking to shed the salary of.  But some of the more “name” DPs exposed include the Red Bulls Juan Pablo Angel and Seattle’s Blaise Nkufo.  Maybe the best of this group is the Quakes’ Geovanni.

Past Stars – MLS’s second-leading goal scorer is available, as Jeff Cunningham was made available by FC Dallas.  Also, as part of their rebuilding, the Crew put Guillermo Barros Schelotto on their list, making a veteran leader available for either expansion team.  And instead of being placed in the re-entry draft, Sporting KC’s Jimmy Conrad was left unprotected.

2010 Playoff Stars – Colorado is protecting most of the starters from its MLS Cup-winning club (with the notable exception being Anthony Wallace) but FC Dallas is exposing a number of its big names: Eric Avila, Atiba Harris, captain Daniel Hernandez, and Dax McCarty.  Playoff qualifiers Seattle (Nyassi) and Real Salt Lake (Grabavoy) also made the decision to possibly part ways with some key contributors.

Players Leaving – Yes Jonathan Bornstein is leaving for Mexico, but MLS rules still state he needs to be placed on the unprotected list.  Just a weird quirk.

Players Not on the List – One player that was expected to be on the list was Brian Carroll, but the Crew traded him today to the Philadelphia Union.  While Carroll is reunited with his former coach and Columbus clears more cap space for rebuilding, I am sure Vancouver and Portland executives were looking seriously at drafting him.  There are also quirky decisions scattered throughout the league, like New England holding on to two keepers.

Obviously factors like need and cap space will factor into who is selected, but pretend you are the GM of one of these expansion teams.

No, there isn’t thing officially saying that MLS is coming to Detroit, and I’m not insinuating that it is.

Today the Pontiac Silverdome was sold for peanuts, really. $583,000 for an 80,000-seat stadium.  The Silverdome certainly has aged, and it hasn’t aged well, but it could always be upgraded and when it’s all said and done this firm, which at the moment is still anonymous, got it for a steal.

The Detroit News reports that the company would like to bring a soccer league to the area, which is interesting when you consider that the United Soccer Leagues just announced plans to put a USL First Division team — most likely promoting the existing Michigan Bucks, who also call Pontiac home, from the PDL.  I don’t think the two groups are related, which leaves open the possibly that the group is talking about MLS.  MLS is now using a guideline that expansion teams have a stadium, or at least play in a stadium that the owner has control of — like Seattle does — and the purchase of the Silverdome gives this group a stadium.

The stadium has seen soccer before, it famously became the first indoor stadium to host World Cup matches in 1994, during these matches it was specially fitted with a raised pitch to allow for more width and the use of grass, at the time the stadium used an Astroturf surface for Lions games. It was also home the the Detroit Express of the NASL briefly in the late 70′s.

Today Don Garber announced Montreal as the possible 19th MLS team, and said he wasn’t sure what the 20th would be. There are several other options, but we now know that there is a group in Detroit looking at soccer a serious possiblity.

Is this a non-story? Possibly. But it is interesting.  Personally I’d turn the Silverdome into some sort of post-apocalyptic castle and live in it, but that’s probably just me.

I spent sometime this season following the results of an upstart NPSL team that caused quite a buzz in the lower levels of American soccer, that team is Chattanooga FC.  A quaint, modest Appalachian foothills city that straddles the banks of the Tennessee River, Chattanooga is one of the last places people would look if they were searching for a soccer hotbed, and they would be missing out on something very exciting.

During the course of their debut season Chattanooga led the league in attendence, averaging well over 1,000 fans through the gates of Finley Stadium each week, especially impressive when you consider the city already has an established minor-league baseball team in the Chattanooga Lookouts who play out of the beautiful AT&T Park (yes, it shares a name with a more famous park).

Thinking back to Chattanooga’s success in a league not associated with MLS or the USL, together with the formation of a new professional league by the breakaway TOA clubs, got me asking myself: “Where is North America’s next great soccer city?”

As Kartik wrote earlier today, the TOA league will mark the return of professional soccer to St. Louis, a city which is arguably the heart and soul of the American game. It’s a wonder that a city the size of St. Louis, especially considering it’s natural rivalry with Chicago, went so long without  a professional team.  Now with St. Louis accounted for, it’s time to ask — hypothetically, of course — where one of the leagues will expand next (discounting the already announced expansion cities in MLS and the USL).

Des Moines, Iowa – A midwestern city like St. Louis, has been incredibly supportive of it’s PDL team, the Menace, to the tune of crowds approching, and at times easily exceeding, 4,000. There has been talk of Des Moines joining the professional ranks but as always, money is an issue, as is the lack of a stadium though there are grassroots efforts in place to build a soccer-specific venue in the greater Des Moines area. While not a glamorous market, and one that will certainly be scoffed at by people unaware of the Menace’s off-field success, Des Moines has shown a passion for the sport which few cities in North America can rival.

Omaha, Nebraska – In keeping with the midwestern theme, it’s hard to ignore Omaha when you get a look at the beautiful Morrison Stadium. Craighton, the stadium’s owners and main tenants, are always near the top of the NCAA attendance charts (.pdf), showing that a willingness from the city to support local soccer. It’s not possible to tell whether or not that support would automatically transfer to the professional game, but Omaha has historically shown support for minor-league sports.

Greensboro, North Carolina – And it’s sister cities of Winston-Salem, Burlington, and High Point of course. One of American soccer’s old hands, the Carolina (formerly Greensboro) Dynamo, play in the Triad (Browns Summit, to be exact) and often draw big crowds to their small, tranquil soccer-specific stadium at Bryan Park. Dynamo matches are not the only soccer well supported in the area either as both North Carolina-Greensboro and Wake Forest can lay claim to good crowds, and wonderful little stadiums of their own. Furthermore, the 11,500-seat Rhodes Stadium on the campus of Elon was built with soccer in mind. Though to many people the area sits in the twin shadows of North Carolina’s two major cities, Charlotte and Raleigh, Greensboro boasts one of the most active soccer communities in America.

Jackson, Mississippi – This one will raise a red flag with many people outside of the South, but Jackson isn’t without it’s merits. Yes, Mississippi is and will always be SEC football country, but since 2007 the Jackson area has played host to a modestly successful, and cleverly named PDL team, the Mississippi Brilla. Despite the relative lack of facilities, the Brilla have managed to impress at the gate, especially considering the competition from the Mississippi Braves, the Southern League farm club of Atlanta. While it’s very much a long-shot, Jackson does deserve a mention since it does fit the qualification of being successful “under the radar”.

St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador – Canada’s most historic soccer city, yet there is no professional club within sight. St. John’s is home to King George V Park, site of Canadian soccer’s most memorable triumph and one of the oldest soccer-specific venues in English-speaking North America. St. John’s is reletively small by North American standards, and is certainly remote given it’s location in the Canadian maritimes, but it’s soccer history is expansive and I get the feeling that the city would passionately support a team.

Louisville, Kentucky – Louisville is a big city. It’s not New York, Dallas, or Chicago but it’s still a city that carries with it a big reputation. I’ve always felt that the old Cardinal Stadium — though I’m unsure of it’s fate — would make an ideal soccer stadium, but I’m not sure how well Louisville would support soccer. Soccer would be the fifth sport in the city, after football, basketball, baseball and horse racing but it may just be big enough to support a USL team. I’m in the dark on this one.

I know I’m missing several cities, Victoria, BC among them, so feel free to name some more. Keep in mind that we’re talking about cities that fly under the radar, not the likes of Atlanta or Baltimore.

I guess some would look at this as a continuation of the war of press releases between the United Soccer Leagues and the Team Owners Association, but nonetheless it’s still news.

According to the press release the USL First Division will move forward next year without the member clubs of the TOA, though Tampa seems to be on-board with the USL despite flirting with TOA over the last few months. The one thing that sticks out to me is the inclusion of Edmonton. Some of you may remember when the Aviators played in the old A-League, the ownership had — whimsically — expected crowds in excess of 10,000 but ended up getting crowds of around 2,500. A lot of that had to do with the venue, the cavernous Commonwealth Stadium, which was only available to the club on three weekends because the CFL’s Eskimos — rightfully — had priority scheduling. Eventually the owners simply walked away from the thing and dropped it in the USL’s lap, the USL ended up running it on a shoestring budget — even by their standards — as the renamed “Edmonton FC” as the owner’s took the name with the — good luck having any success with it in the future — and played out the season at a much smaller stadium in Edmonton, where attendance actually managed to improve. Though some polka dance-offs in Medicine Hat probably outdrew the Aviators in truth.

This isn’t a slight at Edmonton, it’s actually a decent soccer city, but following a failure that spectacular it gives you the impression that the USL was pretty hard-pressed to replace Vancouver as a presence in Western Canada.

Earlier we reported on the expansion to Ottawa. It’s really hard to see anything wrong with expansion to Ottawa, it’s a good location for the USL and even though some fans in the Canadian capital had designs on Major League Soccer, that’s not going to happen. They could end up having a good rivalry with Rochester, and the USL is going to miss the passion that the Rochester-Montreal rivalry brought to the league.

One can only assume that Baltimore is represented by Crystal Palace USA, there has been a lot of talk about them getting a stadium in Baltimore finally after playing in the County and out at Navy for a few years. They’re  a strong team, and Baltimore is a good soccer city which would benefit the USL in many ways.

This is the first I’ve heard of a team in Detroit unless it’s the Michigan Bucks, a long-time citidel of the PDL. It’s an interesting move, and again could form a rivalry with Ottawa.

I do see this as good news for soccer in North America. The bickering between the USL and TOA has really left me a bit disillusioned with the lower league game here, but more opportunities for young players to get competitive matches is a good thing, particularly for Canada where professional opportunities are very much at a premium. That said, the USL isn’t much better than the K3 as-far-as expansion goes, so we’ll just have to wait and see. If the bickering continues, we’re certainly in for an eventful winter.

Here’s a link to the press release.

I know, this is MLS Talk, not USL Talk. But given recent events, this is newsworthy.

This has been rumored for awhile, not always the Fury, but that a party in Ottawa was interested in entering the USL First Division. But they picked a really strange time to do it, didn’t they?

A little more about the club: It was founded in 2005 and currently fields teams in the PDL, W-League (Ottawa Fury Women), and the Super-20 League.

It appears that they plan to play matches at a new stadium to be built at Lansdowne Park, pending the approval of the Ottawa city council. Currently Lansdowne Park is the home of Frank Claire Stadium, which hosted matches at the U-20 World Cup. Frank Clair is in, let’s say, less that pristine condition and there’s been talk about redeveloping the place. We may well be looking at a ground-share with a potential new Ottawa CFL team.

The Ottawa council meets tomorrow (Sept. 2) to rule on the stadium plan, and that’s probably what this whole thing hinges on.

So, what do you guys think of this news, and the timing of the announcement considering everything that’s going on with the USL at the moment? I think it’s great news for Canada, the more professional options for Canadians the better.

Update: Here’s a link to the Lansdowne Live project including the potential stadium. The stadium would seat 25,000. That’s massive by USL standards.

There has been a lot of discussion among fans of the beautiful game in the U.S. about promotion and relegation.  On this site, Daniel Feuerstein supported the idea down the road.   One of his main points was that, once MLS and USL clubs have their own stadiums … a lot of the obstacles to this format, would then work themselves out.

I agree that if North American soccer were to make this switch, it would take some time and that teams having their own facilities would be a giant step in the right direction.   However, another possibility has begun to formulate.

Perhaps, promotion / relegation might find a beginning in this part of the world, a different way.  Maybe, in light of the essential “promotion” of Seattle and Portland to MLS franchises (and the flirtation with FC Barcelona Miami), the U.S. based leagues will start with their own model.  USL could be a breeding ground for new MLS sides.

For starters, this issue, is an extremely divisive one.  It seems that there are just as many advocates of pro / rel, as there are those who like the conference style / playoff setup.  I also want to point out that, playoffs and pro / rel could also work together.  Personally, I think that pro / rel wouldn’t be a bad idea, but definitely well down the road.  However, I don’t want to see the playoff system thrown out the window, as it is culturally relevant to American sports.  Not to mention, it’s nice to see different leagues around the world take on their own identity and style in soccer, while still keeping unity with the beautiful game, around the globe.

For pro / rel to ever work … MLS and USL would have to develop a better relationship, of course.  And this cooperation could start with a franchise building partnership. Cross – marketing, would benefit both leagues.   New teams to the North American system, could start off in USL.  There, these clubs could get their bearings straight, learn the ins and outs of the American game.  Then, once they have set up shop and proven their ability to thrive as a franchise, make the jump to the top tier.

Granted, MLS would definitely have to compensate the USL financially, as the best teams would be leaving after establishing themselves in the second tier.  But, it would be a good way to test markets and organizations, before adding them to the top level.  Though the USL – 1 product doesn’t appear to be so different in quality than MLS, solid teams are already jumping ship.

It would be a start anyways, as we are very far away from having soccer – specific, club – owned facilities for all teams.    And it would be a good opportunity for foreign investors, such as the Stoke City based ownership group, of the Austin Aztex.   This type of arrangement, would allow them to try their hand in the American game, before completely committing their finances.

In the end, I think soccer has the best chance in succeeding in this country, through solidarity.   So here’s hoping, one way or the other, to some kind of kinship among all domestic brands, to build the strong foundation we need.