November 7, 2008
Yesterday, WNY FC had their press conference and announced that they have merged with FC Indiana and the team that plays it's home games at PAETEC Park next year will be a professional squad playing in the W-League.
FC Indiana has won the US Open Cup in 2008 and 2005 and were Premier League champs in 2007 and 2005. So, the team taht takes the field in 2009 should be a far better on field product than the Rhinos Women have had in the past.
The interesting thing will be whether the improved on field product will mean more paying fans in the seats. One thing that the WNY Pride will be fighting from the get go will be the perception that since they are not in WPS, that they are a 2nd class team.
It will be cool if they can get friendlies or Open Cup game(s) at PAETEC in 2009.
News & Notes:
- The Chicago Fire advanced to the Eastern Conference Championship round thanks to a 3-0 home win over New England last night.
- Vanocuver has published part of their pitch to MLS. The game plan appears to be to make BC Place very RFK-ish for MLS soccer by closing the upper deck and making the capacity around 22,000 seats.
- There has also been some info on Portland's MLS bid that has come out in the blogosphere.
- Jeff Bradley's latest at MLSNet.com talks about the eleven players that could most use an MLS title. My favorite is Ricardo Clark who has been suspended for the last two MLS Cup Finals.
- Bernardo Fallas of the Houston Chronicle has an article and a blog posting about the status of a stadium for the Dynamo. I wonder if Plan B would include playing footsies with another city to scare Houston?
- Elton John has resigned as life president of Watford. I never knew that he was the life president of Watford........
- SI.com has a solid article on Neven Subotic having to choose between playing for the US and his native country of Bosnia. Gooch and Subotic at center back..........
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.
