MLS Adding Two Teams Within Year
Major League Soccer will expand from 10 teams to 12 within the next year, Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group, said Wednesday at Futbol de Primera’s fifth Honda Soccer Symposium in Beverly Hills.
“Within the next 365 days, the league will announce that it will be adding two more teams,” Leiweke said. “Then we will add two more down the road.”
AEG controls six of the MLS teams, but Leiweke said the expansion teams would not be run by AEG.
“Our purpose is not to be the majority owner of MLS,” he said. “Someday we will have 20 teams with 20 different owners. We are committed to MLS, but we don’t want to dominate MLS.”
Sampson, Hermosillo
Among those attending Wednesday’s symposium was Steve Sampson, the former U.S. national team coach who last week was named coach of Costa Rica, and Carlos Hermosillo, the former Galaxy star and one of the all-time leading goal scorers in Mexican soccer history.
“I am very proud to be the first American coach to have the opportunity to coach the national team of a different country,” said Sampson, who coached the U.S. to the 1998 World Cup in France after earlier being an assistant under Bora Milutinovic on the 1994 U.S. World Cup team.
Hermosillo, who retired recently after a 17-year professional career, revealed that he soon will travel to Spain to study sports management and, while there, will join European champion Real Madrid on a one-year executive internship.
“It is an honor to have the opportunity of learning from the best,” Hermosillo said, “and I hope that afterward I will be able to use this knowledge in order to help further develop soccer in Mexico.”
Razov Suspended
Chicago Fire and U.S. national team forward Ante Razov was fined $2,750 and suspended for three games by the MLS disciplinary committee for what the committee said was a “demonstrated disregard for the safety of his opponent.”
The punishment, which was increased from the automatic $250 fine and one-game suspension that accompanies all red cards, stemmed from Razov’s challenge on New England Revolution defender Jay Heaps during the third game of the Revolution-Fire playoff series.
Because Chicago was eliminated, the former UCLA striker will serve the three-game suspension at the beginning of next season.
Luciano Banned
Luciano, the Brazilian winger who last month admitted that he had faked his age and his name and, under the deception, had played professionally for Palmeiras in Brazil and for Bologna and Chievo in Italy, was banned from all soccer for six months and fined $145,000 by the disciplinary commission of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.
Gold for Turkey
In appreciation of Turkey’s unprecedented third-place finish at the 2002 World Cup, the Turkish government doled out more than a half-million dollars in gold coins to the coaches and players on the national team. Coach Senol Gunes received 600 coins, worth roughly $42,000, and the 23 players each received 300 coins.
