FC Barcelona will be presenting in New York a new project to become the co-proprietors of one of the new MLS (Mayor League Soccer) franchises that are to be created for the 2010 season. FC Barcelona is seeking to further their expansion into the United States, and if the deal comes off, they will become the first European club to enjoy direct association with the North American league.
Joan Laporta, president of FC Barcelona, along with Joan Oliver, the club’s general corporate director will be in Miami tomorrow to present their plans. The negotiations have intensified in recent days as Barça seek involvement in one of the two places that the MLS is offering from 2010 as part of the MLS expansion scheme. Portland, Montreal and Las Vegas are other candidate cities.
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This is great news for MLS. The most promising aspect to it, even more than the Barca brandname being associated with MLS is the cost of a franchise, up from 17.5 million to 40 million in only three years. That's amazing.
I'm very disappointed about the team playing in Florida however. I read in the article that the Barca point man on this project called Florida the most important "city" that the MLS has yet to tap. In fact, MLS has tried, twice. There have only been two totally failed franchises in MLS history, and they were both in Florida, The Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion.
The biggest misconception about Florida in terms of soccer is that you look at the demographics and say "there's a huge Latino population, there's huge soccer potential there." That's a failure to distinguish one set of latinos from another.
Floridian Lations are overwhelmingly Caribean. Cubans, Domicans, Puetro Ricans, and fleeing Venezuelans. Those Latinos are literally worlds away from the Mexican Americans going to the Chivas USA games in LA or the one's that filled the Cardinals stadium in Phoenix. Caribeann Lations are not soccer fans, they're diehards baseball fans.
Even looking outside soccer, Floridians are not viable sports fans for anything other than college football. All teams struggle there.
Hopefully the Barca name and connections to European soccer will be enough the get past these hurrdels
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