FCB Miami: Weighing the seven bids

American football magazine 90:00 gives a view on Barcelona's bid to be part of the Major League Soccer (MLS), the professional football league in the United States and Canada (read more here).

There are seven bids (Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Portland, St. Louis, Atlanta and Miami) for two spots. The clubs that are selected can start playing in the MLS from 2010.




Breaking Down MLS Expansion

Greg Daurio

Everyone else has weighed in on MLS expansion, so I figured it’s my turn. When push comes to shove, there are two ways to look at the seven cities that are vying for the two available teams that will begin play in 2011. One is the utopian view (team x really deserves a team so lets give it to them). The other is the pragmatic view (MLS weighs their preset criteria against the strength of the bids and then sees who is going to write them the biggest check a la Seattle).

The simple fact is, as much as advocates for certain cities want to hype up certain bids, there is no slam-dunk.

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Which brings us to the most mouth-watering bid of the group, at least on the surface. Barcelona is teaming up with Brightstar billionaire Marcelo Claure to bring a team back to Miami. A deal has already been struck with FIU to use their football stadium while they secure a permanent soccer specific facility. On the surface, this looks like a deal that is too good to pass up. Unfortunately, Barcelona president Joan Laporta is managing to say all the wrong things.

First off, he’s calling Barcelona’s bid a chance to expand the Barcelona brand in the U.S. Should the first words out of his mouth be something about building a competitive team that will win championships and serve the Miami community? Second, he’s already saying that he wants to fill the roster with players from their academies in Latin America, and aging players from Big Brother that have reached the end of their European career. Problem is, MLS only allows 8 foreign players on the roster. When push comes to shove, Barcelona seems extremely naïve when it comes to the rules of MLS and this smells a lot like Chivas USA part 2. That has been a marketing disaster since day one.

What it might come down to is who can MLS afford to make wait another round. If St. Louis gets rejected for a second time, and Cooper has to watch the expansion fee rise again, they may lose that city for good. The same might be said for a Portland bid. All the other bids are backed by ownership groups that could easily swallow a hike in the expansion fee.

In a perfect world, St. Louis and Portland will start playing in 2011. We don’t live in a perfect world, and it seems likely that Miami will replace Portland in this round of expansion.

Read the full article here


Read more:
New website on Barcelona's Miami project

Barcelona wants to be part of American league

Barcelona weighing Miami and East Coast cities