Why not St. Louis for MLS expansion?
Major League Soccer announced recently that a Philadelphia expansion franchise will become the league's 16th team starting play in the 2010 season.
Too bad.
Nothing against Philadelphia or the concept of expansion in general. Philadelphia will offer a new rival for New York and D.C. United, and playing in the nation's fourth-largest media market -- on the East Coast, no less -- will help the league's visibility.
The team plans to build a 20,000-seat stadium as part of a major commercial development in Chester, a blighted area of suburban Philly. It's a noble concept, and it should benefit MLS as well as the greater Philadelphia area.
St. Louis would have been a better choice for Fire fans.
When the Fire plays in Columbus on July 5, check out how many Fire fans have make the five-hour drive to Ohio to cheer on the Men in Red. It's usually several hundred. Now imagine those same fans making the drive to St. Louis, a longtime Chicago sports rival.
"With all the rivalries in other sports that St. Louis and Chicago already have, it's a ready-made rivalry," said Jeff Cooper, St. Louis Soccer United Chairman and the driving force behind the St. Louis effort. "We have a great market. It would be fun rivalry to have."
It would beat the Fire's rivalry with FC Dallas. The Brimstone Cup always seemed a little contrived.
Actually, the drive would be about four hours to downstate Collinsville, the town on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River where investors plan to build a soccer stadium as soon as they get MLS approval. Collinsville is part of a soccer triangle in that area, with Granite City and Edwardsville, whose teams have long been powers in Illinois high school soccer, winning 14 state titles since 1972.
The league promises it's not done expanding. It could add two more teams for the 2011 season, and St. Louis is one of the top candidates, along with Montreal, Las Vegas, Portland (Ore.), Vancouver and Miami. Milwaukee would have been a good rival for the Fire also, but those expansion plans have gone adrift.
"As evidenced by our patience in the case of Philadelphia, we will only expand when we believe the circumstances are right," MLS commissioner Don Garber said at the Philly news conference. "We continue to seek the essential combination of strong ownership, an appropriate facility controlled by that ownership, and a market with a tradition of supporting the sport.
"St. Louis is one of the leading candidates we are considering, and we are hopeful that all elements will come together soon for the city to join the league."
Those elements are coming together in St. Louis to match the city's great soccer history. Cooper points out that St. Louis and Kearny, N.J., are considered the birthplaces of American soccer. The legendary 1950 World Cup team included six St. Louis players, and the city has been well-represented on national teams ever since. It's youth programs are as strong as any city's.
Anybody else surprised St. Louis wasn't one of the league's original cities?
"You can go on and on about the history of St. Louis soccer," Cooper said.
We won't. We'll just ask why, considering St. Louis' long and storied tradition as one of America's premier soccer cities, it's taking so long?