MLS Set to Expand With Six New Teams
Major League Soccer is expected to announce expansion plans today calling for two teams to be added in 1998, two more in 2000 and another two in 2002, bringing the league total to 16 teams.
Chicago is a prime candidate to be the first expansion city, with other candidates under consideration including Seattle, San Diego and St. Louis.
A league source said there are no plans to relocate any teams, even though the Colorado Rapids and Tampa Bay Mutiny have been struggling to attract fans.
The Rapids, owned by Philip F. Anschutz, whose sports properties also include the Kings, are expected to be overhauled from top to bottom. No effort has been made this season to reach Colorado’s 400,000 Hispanic residents, many of them soccer fans. That will change.
Tampa Bay, which was thought likely to move to Miami, instead could be splitting its home games between Tampa and Orlando, sources said.
In addition, MLS will allow each team to add a fifth foreign player next season, although it was not clear whether the rule limiting clubs to a maximum of four non-Americans on the field at any one time would be changed.
*
Two of the U.S. national team’s leading players, goalkeeper Kasey Keller, 27, of Seattle, and forward Jovan Kirovski, 20, of San Diego, agreed to new contracts in Europe.
Keller, a member of the U.S. 1990 and 1994 World Cup teams and starter on the 1992 and 1996 Olympic teams, moved from Millwall in the English second division to Leicester City in the Premier League for $1.39 million.
Kirovski, who spent the last three years in England playing for Manchester United’s reserve team, scoring 20 goals in 21 games last season, signed a four-year contract with Germany’s two-time defending Bundesliga champion Borussia Dortmund. Terms were not revealed.
*
Prime Deportiva, the Spanish-language cable network, has acquired the rights to the Mexican League. It will televise 52 live games and 132 tape-delayed games this season, which began last weekend. Prime Deportiva also has rights to the league playoffs.
