Will new MLS teams recycle old names?

Major League Soccer’s board of governors is meeting Wednesday in New York and one topic not high on the agenda but quite likely to be broached, even informally, is the matter of names for the new expansion teams.

Seattle begins play in 2009. Philadelphia will follow in 2010. St. Louis is an odds-on favorite for 2011, and Montreal, Atlanta, Vancouver, Miami, Portland and New York all are jostling for position behind them.

Names, however, are at a premium. Once the Dallas Burn became FC Dallas and Toronto opted to be known as Toronto FC, the FC (or football club) moniker was sort of used up, or at least a bit passe.

No MLS club has yet used a couple of other favorites: AC (for athletic club) or City or Inter, and they all have something going for them.

And what about United? In England, Manchester United happily exists side by side with Newcastle United and West Ham United in the Premier League, and there are any number of other Uniteds scattered around the country.

So what if Seattle, Philadelphia or St. Louis chooses to be called United? It might already have happened, in fact. The investment and development group trying to land a team in St. Louis is called St. Louis Soccer United and it already has a website (stloiussoccerunited.com) and a rather swank logo.

Would D.C. United object to there being another United or two in the league? Would MLS object?

Commissioner Don Garber was in Los Angeles recently and fielded the question.

“My personal view is that a team deserves to have its own identity,” he said. “I don’t believe that D.C. owns the name United; it’s sort of ubiquitous in soccer throughout the world. [But] it’s hard to imagine that they can’t find a name that would be more distinctive for them and their community.

“We’re still developing our league and our team identities. I do believe our brands need to be about the sport going forward. We should celebrate the past, and honor and respect the past … but our brands should be about where we are tomorrow, not about where we were yesterday.

“I’m hopeful that they can find a name that is more future-thinking.”

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There were some interesting remarks from Mexico Coach Hugo Sanchez when he arrived back in Mexico City after his team had failed to qualify for this summer’s Olympic Games.

Sanchez took the opportunity to criticize his critics.

“They want blood after two, three or four bad games,” he said. “We have to be fairer, more flexible and more human. I’m 49 years old and I don’t know everything. They hired me to evaluate the players, and the ones who were in this team I considered to be the right ones.

“We failed. We have to accept it as such, take it as it is … and show that we can come through it and then face the more demanding challenge, which is to qualify for the World Cup,” in South Africa in 2010.

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Mike Stofile, South Africa’s sports minister, told the South African Press Agency that the country would spend $3.7 billion in hosting the World Cup and that it had “complied with literally every guarantee we have made … we even went beyond that.” … Perennial Italian champion Juventus plans to build a $166-million stadium on the site of the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin that was constructed for the 1990 World Cup but never met with favor from fans because of the running track around the pitch. The new stadium should be ready in 2011… . Pele will be among those honored in New York today at a gala fund-raiser for Harlem Youth Soccer… . Toronto FC reportedly is pursuing former Chivas USA and New York Red Bulls midfielder Amado Guevara, the Honduran playmaker who was the most valuable player in MLS in 2004… . The San Jose Earthquakes have hired former New Zealand international Jason Batty as their goalkeeper coach and former Danish international and two-time MLS champion Ronnie Ekelund as technical advisor.

grahame.jones@latimes.com