October 15, 2008
With the deadline to throw your hat in the ring for the next round of MLS expansion allegedly being today, you have Ottawa in the mix, FC Barcelona is working on bringing a team to Miami, and people that frequent Steven Goff's blog would pick Portland and St. Louis are currently ahead with Montreal not far behind in third.
The best case scenario for the Rhinos and the USL will be if St. Louis, Las Vegas, Ottawa, or New York get the teams. Miami would be a market that I think the USL could stand to lose.
The worst case scenario for the USL would be if the two teams came from Portland, Vancouver, and Montreal.
With FC Barcelona in the mix with the Miami bid, I would expect that Miami gets a team and the NY Mets grab a second franchise for the NY City market.
And my guesses are purely based on MLS's love of deep pocketed ownership groups and I believe that those two groups, along with Ottawa's bid, will have the deepest pockets in the bidding process.
News & Notes:
- Scott Vallow posted his final Rochester Insider.com blog posting of the 2008 season on Monday.
- The USMNT starts playing out the string tonight at T&T. The game will be on ESPN at 8pm tonight.
- Seattle Sounders FC has Kasey Keller and Sebastien Le Toux on board and may be after Freddie Ljunberg as a DP. Three words come to mind when reading that: Just Say NO!
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to news@soccersam.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
