MLS to Add Toronto, but Others May Move
Major League Soccer today is expected to add Toronto as its 13th team and first Canadian franchise.
The club, which will begin play in 2007, will be owned and operated by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which also owns the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the Air Canada Centre.
“We hope to have it confirmed at our board meeting tomorrow,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said Friday in Frisco, Texas, site of Sunday’s championship final involving the Galaxy and the New England Revolution.
The board is expected to approve two other key proposals:
* Teams would be given the freedom to step outside the salary cap and sign one marquee player for impact.
“We’re going to talk about giving every team the opportunity to have a Landon [Donovan] or a [Francisco] Palencia or an Eddie Johnson,” Garber said.
* MLS teams would be encouraged to develop young players through soccer academies by allowing them to retain the rights to any such players they produce rather than losing them to the draft.
Meanwhile, Garber said that unless new ownership is found for the San Jose Earthquakes and the Kansas City Wizards, preferably within the next month, each team would be relocated.
Contraction, in Garber’s view, is not an option.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “That shouldn’t be something you guys [the media] are even thinking about. We’d have to move the teams.”
The Earthquakes and Wizards are original members of the 10-year-old league and have won MLS Cups.
San Jose is owned by Los Angeles-based AEG, which has said for a year, in no uncertain terms, that it wants to shed the team.
Kansas City is owned by Lamar Hunt, who decided to sell the team after voters defeated a tax plan last November that would have funded improvements at Arrowhead Stadium. The Wizards share the stadium with the NFL’s Chiefs, also owned by Hunt.
Each team has been in limbo since word of the efforts to sell surfaced. Neither is selling season tickets for 2006.
Garber did not identify potential suitors for either team.
He was asked why, after a year or more, the issues are unresolved.
“The easy answer would be that we’ve made a decision to move those teams, but we haven’t,” Garber said. “We’re still working hard to keep both of those teams in their markets.
“We need local ownership, we need a stadium plan and we need a committed fan base.
“In San Jose, we don’t have a local owner, we don’t have a stadium plan and we have a fan base that has been inconsistent in its support -- very supportive toward the end of the year but not as supportive during the year, week in and week out.
“We’re working very hard to get somebody to step up and buy that team from AEG and to make progress with a municipality in the Bay Area that’s willing to make a commitment to our sport. We haven’t been able to do that as of today.”
The league is believed to be in discussions with Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment, which counts the NHL’s San Jose Sharks among its properties, but progress has been slow.
“In Kansas City, we have a similar situation,” he said. “We’re engaged with a local ownership group. We haven’t been able to finalize a deal....
“We have obvious deadlines. We’ve got to make a schedule and we’ve got to re-brand a new team if it’s going to move, but we’re trying hard to keep those teams there.”
MLS has been courting Televisa, the Latin media giant, and it remains a viable potential investor, according to Garber. But whether its interest is in the Wizards or Earthquakes, as opposed to an expansion team, remained unclear Friday.
The addition of Toronto, meanwhile, raised the issue of MLS developing Canadian, rather than American, players.
“We think we’re going to have 14 teams in 2007,” Garber said. “We can have 16 teams by ’08 or ’09. We’re developing a lot of [American] players. But we also believe that we need to raise the profile of the sport on this continent.
“If Canada has a better national team, this is going to be a better continent for soccer, and right now that country has been lagging behind the United States in developing its game. We think a pro team will help them do that and we think that’s better for American soccer.”
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Best XI
The all-time MLS team, as announced Friday, as selected by fans, media and team officials, in honor of the league’s 10th year of competition:
* Tony Meola, GK, 1996-2005
* Eddie Pope, D, 1996-2005
* Jeff Agoos, D, 1996-2005
* Marcelo Balboa, D, 1996-2002
* Marco Etcheverry, MF, 1996-2003
* Landon Donovan, MF, 2001-05
* Carlos Valderrama, MF, 1996-2002
* Preki, MF, 1996-2005
* Peter Nowak, MF, 1998-2002
* Jaime Moreno, F, 1996-2005
* Brian McBride, F, 1996-2003
