Friday Soccer Roundtable, Part 2

Hope you enjoyed the first batch of answers. Here's our second question, fresh out of the oven.

Where are the next two cities in which you would like to see MLS expand? Do you even think MLS should expand? Feel free to use any city in the US or Canada as a destination, even if an MLS franchise already exists there.

Ric: Where I would like to see as the next 2 cities is different from where they are likely to be.

In two weeks will be the deadline for applications for those who want to apply for a 2011 franchise (the next open availability). The next two cities, already approved are Seattle (2009) and Philadelphia (2010), making 16.

More teams are needed in the Midwest, so St. Louis is favored for the 17th city. Also, since there are 3 new Canadian cities competing for 2001, one of those is certainly possible for 2011. My best guess is that the west coast city of Vancouver would be the favorite of those, due in no small part to Steve Nash's participation. He is also involved in the Montreal effort, so that could go either way, but his name recognition and dedication says to me that MLS will want to fast track in that case.

The cities where I would most like to see teams are Miami and San Diego, but those will occur further into the future. I support all of the efforts, and feel that the table could and should go to 24 teams, with carefully managed growth.

Josh: Up here in Seattle, I'd love to see Portland get one of the teams -- although it's probably a bit of a long shot. It'd continue a long-lived and emotional rivalry between the two cities up here in the Pacific Northwest.

Portland calls itself Soccer Town U.S.A. and I'm sure the people there would embrace the team. The Timbers of the USL are a great draw. The city has only one other professional franchise, the Trailblazers of the NBA, and the league schedules are complete opposites. Not to mention no big colleges. So I'm confident the stands would be full and it would be a great fit.

Even if they need some public money, I believe they'd get it. Plus, MLS teams could go two-for-one on flights up here.

For the second team I'd say either St. Louis or Montreal. I could say Vancouver, but that's just getting greedy for the Northwest.

Another team in the Midwest seems a bit redundant, so I'll settle for Montreal. Some of the same arguments for Portland apply. It's a large market without a lot of competition from other professional sports teams. The NHL schedule is also opposite to MLS.

Plus, besides crazy hooligans, the other Canadian franchise is doing pretty well for itself.

Dave: As a USL club supporter, I'd like to see Vancouver and Portland get in next, because that would save my Carolina Railhawks a whole lot of money in travel costs. In fact, if USL clubs on the East Coast never have to travel further west than St. Paul and Austin, that has the potential to make USL even more competitive with MLS.

I'm wondering how much the success of USL clubs the CONCACAF Champions League will affect some cities' interest in moving up to MLS. Look at Montreal, for example. The Impact already have a 13,000-seat stadium that fills up regularly. They only have to outplay Vancouver and
Toronto a couple of times a year to get to the CONCACAF Champions League, and they look like a favorite to get through to the CCL knockout stage this year on current form. Would they trade that for a salary cap, a smaller roster and a visit from David Beckham once a year? Would that even make sense from an economic standpoint?

For U.S. cities, it probably would. Imagine for a moment, though, if a few millionaires with money to burn decided to buy into USL instead of MLS. After all, you could build a USL-1 club and a decent stadium from the ground up for far less than the $30M that MLS is asking for an
expansion fee, and you'd probably have enough left over to build a side quite capable of winning the U.S Open Cup and getting to the Champions League -- again, without the salary and roster constraints of MLS, where teams aren't deep enough to handle success.

You'd have to think that MLS has no choice but to increase its salary cap and roster size limit just to prevent something like that from happening.

ü75: If the MLS remains at it is set up now, I'll say that Portland and St. Louis deserve their shot. But I'll give myself some wiggle room in possibly adding a third to my argument.

First of all, I just want to posit that I think MLS will not become a top tier league unless it decides to regionalize. The US is a vast country, and too much of any potential profit goes to travel. That money could instead be used to lure CONCACAF's top players away from their national leagues, and to keep the American second-choice, those who currently go to, say, Denmark, within MLS. Without going too far down the road, I'll just say that the American big four --the leagues that can afford nationwide travel--started in that way. NBA in the Midwest, NFL the same as well as east coast, MLB was mostly an east coast enterprise, while NHL (in here for the sake of argument), had their Original Six all in close proximity to the Canadian-American border. When one considers that one matchup considered to be a regional rivalry--Chicago-Columbus--involves greater travel than the EPL's longest roadtrip--Portsmouth-Sunderland--you can see how the breadth of our country makes it hard for real rivalries to develop.

Regionalizing would not have to mean contraction of clubs, but instead a sort-of Ma Bell breakup, with a championship at the end. The two leagues, presumably East and West, would play each other only in a Championship, kind of like the AL and NL used to in baseball. This would greatly cut down on travel as well as possibly give rise to that MLS rarity--the away fan.

Enough digression. Portland is an obvious choice here. The Timbers have a long standing tradition, and a long-term rivalry with next year's newest MLS team in Seattle. They have a passionate fan base already installed, and, should they get out of the baseball park, would provide great atmosphere to the league. Think Toronto FC, but American.

St. Louis is a more sentimental choice. St. Louis was the original de facto home of soccer in the US. Bringing a team there would be a nod to the history if the sport in this country. A history that weaves back into the early parts of last century, and not only back to Paul Caligiuri sending us to World Cup '90.

The wiggle room is this: St. Louis should not be an expansion team, but instead the relocated team from Kansas City. KC has only moved backwards since their initial inclusion in the MLS. Think of their inclusion in the MLS as a thank you to Lamar Hunt. Unfortunately, the city never took to the team, and now they play in a minor-league baseball park on the western edge of urban KC. There has been some talk of the team moving to a new stadium in the Overland Park area, but no construction has started. At least they avoided moving to a high school football stadium, as was once thought.

So, if KC moves to St. Louis, where to put a new expansion team? NYC. Derbies are wonderful things, and despite the LA one getting tagged a Superclassico well before its time, that is a well-attended game, no matter the relative standings of the two teams. Also, as I think is important to the league, it would set up an actual rivalry on the East Coast, with away fans encouraged to trek across the city to support their team.