Am I the only one who sees a problem with Don Garber's logic? Kansas City is playing at some bush league baseball park for 2 years while their new stadium is getting built (and good luck to the Wizards if they think they'll fill it), New York is stuck at Giants Stadium filling only a quarter of the seats and making do with NFL gridiron lines on the feild, and the new franchise in San Jose is making do with Buck Shaw Stadium - a facility with capacity for only 8,400 fans at the most.November 16, 2007
Major league expansion
I remember attending the MLS Cup final at the Home Depot Centre in Southern California a few years back. In those days the commissioner's annual news conference was more like a conversation.
It consisted of a dozen or so journalists sitting around casually in a small room chatting with the man himself. My how things have changed.
This year's affair was held in a much larger room on the top floor of the National Press Building in the heart of Washington. Dozens of people in attendance. Wander around and you never know who you might see. Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is here. And oh, isn't that former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein?
Don Garber spoke for 45 minutes this year and covered it all. Let's start with expansion. With Seattle joining in '09, the league wants another eastern team to continue to keep the east-west balance in play. It looks like either Philadelphia or St. Louis. We had been hoping for Montreal of course, but it has become apparent that the new 13,000-seat stadium (expandable to 17,000) might be too small. Heck, at 20,000 the commish hinted that BMO Field might be too small, at least for Toronto.
It appears as though the ball is in Impact owner Joey Saputo's court. Find a way to expand, and you might get one. But something probably has to go wrong in both St. Louis and Philadelphia for that to happen. Vancouver meanwhile is slowly moving from the front burner to the back burner. If they don't get that stadium built soon, they'll be turning the stove off completely.
Here's another topic to discuss. The league is addressing Toronto's personnel handicap, perceived or otherwise, with respect to Canadian content and expects to make an announcement soon on what constitutes a domestic player. No details yet, but look for some movement to help Toronto.
The playoff format will be massaged slightly for next year. Unlike this season when the top two teams in each conference automatically qualified for the post-season, next year it’s the top three, plus the next two teams with the best records regardless of conference.
And we're not the only Canadian media here anymore. GOLtv and Larry Millson of The Globe and Mail have made the journey as well. The winds of change continue to sweep through the sport and this league, and it’s terrific.
Sure, Vancouver isn't looking in good shape at the moment, but the new stadium in Montreal should be enough to trump most other MLS franchise contenders. 13,500 seats is a lot more than the New York Red Bulls and KC Wizards fill on average.
If Saputo and the fans in Montreal really want into the MLS - I don't see a good reason why they can't.