FCB Miami: A critical view on Barcelona's bid

author: Greg Daurio
source: 90:00
date: December 2008
editing: fcbtransfers.blogspot.com





When MLS accepted bids for two expansion teams to join the league in 2011, most eyes fixated squarely on one name. Spanish super giants, Barcelona, have teamed up with local Miami businessman Marcelo Claure in an attempt to bring MLS back to south Florida.

Even casual soccer fans, and the often soccer ignorant sports media could latch onto the idea of Barcelona coming to America and get excited. After all, Miami is considered to be a gateway to South America. It’s one of the sexiest markets in the United States, and the list of potential designated players that could come stateside straight from the Catalan club’s roster is drool worthy.

Unfortunately, all that glitter’s not gold. Barcelona president Joan Laporta has already started making demands from MLS. As has been proven in the past, playing hardball with MLS isn't a good way to get what you want.

First off, he is demanding that MLS let Miami in a year early. In theory, it could be done. The Miami investor group has already signed a lease agreement with Florida International University to use their stadium. That lease agreement starts in 2010. So the team would have a place to play.

Since making the demand to be let in a year ahead of schedule, Laporta has gone on record as saying that if MLS doesn’t let Barcelona in for 2010, then Barcelona will never again submit a bid for MLS expansion. Suddenly, Barcelona went from a confident suitor ready to go a year early to a spoiled rotten child that is going to take their ball and go home if they don’t get their way. But why?

Well, unbeknownst to some people, Barcelona is set up with a board and a president (Laporta). The president is up for election every four years, and Laporta’s term is about to run out in 2010. Suddenly the Miami bid is starting to look like Laporta’s pet project, and the one time offer threat might be because he can’t guarantee that the next president, or the board will support action to expand into MLS.

That alone should be enough to give pause to MLS. The league has been adamant that it needs stable ownership that is in it for the long haul. There is absolutely nothing stable about an ownership group that could potentially be changing every four years.

That’s not the only problem with Barcelona’s involvement in the Miami bid. Remember that bit about Barcelona plucking players from their youth academies and bringing them to Miami? If it sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what Chivas USA did in their inaugural year with miserable results.

Granted, Barcelona is a much bigger club on the world stage than Chivas is, but Barcelona never said that they would bring in players from their academy in Spain. And if academy players from one of the best clubs in this hemisphere weren’t good enough for MLS, what are the odds that academy players from a couple of Central American and South American countries are going to be good enough?

On top of all of that, they have also projected to earn a $9 million profit in year one. Funny thing about that, is no MLS team has ever cleared more than a $5 million dollar profit. So either Barcelona thinks that their name attachment alone is going to cause the notoriously fickle south Florida fan base to flock to their games and buy gobs of merchandise, or they simply have no clue when it comes to the way that MLS operates as a business.

You would hope that a club of that prestige isn’t that naïve, but if they aren’t then it points to them being that arrogant. Either way, it seems like a headache that isn’t worth dealing with, especially considering that the Miami investment group has no imminent plans to construct a soccer specific venue for the team, and MLS has already tried and failed in the Miami market.

With all that’s been said, it seems clear that Barcelona feels as though they are above MLS, and in many ways they are correct. But in single entity structure that is Major League Soccer, the league itself needs to be perceived as the big fish, not the lackey for an overbearing absentee owner several thousand miles away.

read the full and original article here


Read more:
Interview with Barcelona partner Claure
Henry could leave for Miami in 2010
MLS not yet convinced by Miami bid