Wednesday, April 20, 2005
On to San Antonio?
If you're an Earthquakes, Wizards, or, hell, even a Metrostars fan, you have more reason to be worried that your favorite MLS team could be moving soon.
The city of San Antonio, as you probably heard, has struck a deal with MLS to put a team in the Alamodome as soon as next year. Nothing is finalized as yet -- the city still has some hoops to jump through -- but the deal being offered to MLS is pretty damn attractive. It's loaded with millions of dollars worth of incentives, and essentially hands the Alamodome over to whatever franchise arrives on its doorstep.
There's a chance this to-be-decided team will take one of the promised expansion slots, but it seems more likely that Texas will be the destination for an existing franchise. San Jose and Kansas City top the list, due to their existing ownership and management problems, plus the lack of concrete plans for soccer-specific stadiums.
The Metrostars have long been touted as the "crown jewel" of MLS, but after 10 seasons of a mixture of mediocrity and embarrassment, the ongoing Harrison stadium soap opera, and hints from Garber that MLS and AEG are close to fed up with the existing arrangement in NJ, the team that's supposed to straddle the Hudson cannot be ruled out as a possible contender to be packed up and shipped West. Is that likely to happen? No, I don't think so. But it is definitely a possibility, and, taking an optimistic view, something that MLS can perhaps use to encourage the unruly folks in Trenton from throwing more monkey wrenches into the plan to get the team out of Giants Stadium and into some realm where operating costs won't be hopelessly deep in the red.
The city of San Antonio, as you probably heard, has struck a deal with MLS to put a team in the Alamodome as soon as next year. Nothing is finalized as yet -- the city still has some hoops to jump through -- but the deal being offered to MLS is pretty damn attractive. It's loaded with millions of dollars worth of incentives, and essentially hands the Alamodome over to whatever franchise arrives on its doorstep.
There's a chance this to-be-decided team will take one of the promised expansion slots, but it seems more likely that Texas will be the destination for an existing franchise. San Jose and Kansas City top the list, due to their existing ownership and management problems, plus the lack of concrete plans for soccer-specific stadiums.
The Metrostars have long been touted as the "crown jewel" of MLS, but after 10 seasons of a mixture of mediocrity and embarrassment, the ongoing Harrison stadium soap opera, and hints from Garber that MLS and AEG are close to fed up with the existing arrangement in NJ, the team that's supposed to straddle the Hudson cannot be ruled out as a possible contender to be packed up and shipped West. Is that likely to happen? No, I don't think so. But it is definitely a possibility, and, taking an optimistic view, something that MLS can perhaps use to encourage the unruly folks in Trenton from throwing more monkey wrenches into the plan to get the team out of Giants Stadium and into some realm where operating costs won't be hopelessly deep in the red.
