Jump to content

North American Pro Soccer 2018


Gothamite

Recommended Posts

I remember when Houston signed Cubo Torres as a way to fire up the Latinx community and then he disappeared. What happened there?

1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.4k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Went to my first DC United game at Audi Field. The pitch looks smaller on TV than it does in person. Sweet stadium overall. To be fair though the only other pro soccer venue I've attended to compare it to is RFK about three years ago.

 

SN: you wouldn't believe how nuts the crowd went over that lucky goal by Canouse

Hotter Than July > Thriller

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nashville SC tied it in stopage time to take a win away from FC Cincinnati 3-3. Despite the draw FC Cincinnati now leaves the USL with another new record as the now own the record for consecutive games unbeaten. 23 games unbeaten since May 26th to end the season (Richmond started its first 22 games unbeaten in 2013). The regular season ends with a record of 23 wins 8 draws and only 3 losses, a goal differencial of 38 scoring 72 goals and giving up 34. We await games tomorrow to determine the seeding for the USL Cup playoffs. Cincinnati has the number one overall seed throughout.

Signature intentionally left blank

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, 4_tattoos said:

Isn't he from Northern California? Maybe he could join the Sacramento to MLS effort. Does he have the resources to get Sacramento Republic over the previous hurdles they stumbled upon?

 

SHUT UP AND GO AWAY YOU MONSTER. 

 

In in all seriousness though, :censored: no. :censored: that :censored:. He can go die in a fire.

 

We’ve already had one rich dickhead Kings owner swoop in and steal half of this team from the guys who built it from the ground up (booted his ass to the curb in the most cold and unceremonious manner imagineable, too). We absolutely do NOT need that happening to the other half of our ownership group. 

 

Precourt and Austin is gonna get it’s stupid team and now it’s going to come at the cost of Sacramento, and everyone knows it. So, in essence, Ohio has found a way to steal a team from us twice while oversaturating their market. (I’m only half kidding about this part). 

 

 

 

 

IN BETTER NEWS. 

 

Phoenix Rising dropped their final match tonight and we topped Vegas 1-0 (who beat Phoenix last week) which propelled us to the #2 seed in the Western conference playoffs. This is great news for me because it means more home playoff matches (and, if they win, more $$$ for me). 

 

 

And finally, this is just too freakin awesome. It’s been a long time since sports has moved me to tears, but this one for sure did it. I’m so proud to be a part of this club. 

 

https://www.uslsoccer.com/news_article/show/957915-republic-fc-signs-15-year-old-harding-through-make-a-wish

 

Hopefully some good video of this comes out soon, because this was downright moving. 

spacer.png

On 11/19/2012 at 7:23 PM, oldschoolvikings said:
She’s still half convinced “Chris Creamer” is a porn site.)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, DG_Now said:

I remember when Houston signed Cubo Torres as a way to fire up the Latinx community and then he disappeared. What happened there?

He just wasn't that good.

 

Look what happened after he left, he transferred to Pumas for $2 million and only made a handful of appearances. He's currently playing for Xolos, and I have only seem him play a couple of times for Tijuana.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/14/2018 at 4:54 AM, Bucfan56 said:

Precourt and Austin is gonna get it’s stupid team and now it’s going to come at the cost of Sacramento, and everyone knows it. So, in essence, Ohio has found a way to steal a team from us twice while oversaturating their market. (I’m only half kidding about this part). 

 

If that happens, Sac will have nobody to blame but itself.  MLS hasn’t been shy about the holdup with their application. They’ve had a full year to shore up their ownership group, and failed. That failure is on them. 

 

I desperately want the Republic in MLS, and am lukewarm at best on Austin.  But neither Precourt nor Austin FC nor FC Cincinnati can steal what Sacramento can’t or won’t actually own. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/13/2018 at 11:54 AM, Mac the Knife said:

 

 

 

Random but sequential thoughts...

(1)  Columbus is trading an ***hole owner for an incompetent one.  Given Haslam's history?  I'm not sure it's a step up.

 

 

I think I speak for my friends in Columbus when I say that Satan himself would be a step up from one Jay Anthony Precourt Jr.

 

Haslam is a criminal and a bad sports owner, but at least he's going to keep the team from moving. Let's deal with one rich :censored: at a time. 

 

On 10/13/2018 at 5:09 PM, Gothamite said:

 

Texas is a big place.  Moreover, Austin is not Houston.  And neither one of those is the Dallas suburbs.  I am very hesitant to draw too many conclusions there.

 

The thing Austin has that might work over Houston and Dallas is the same reason Las Vegas worked in the NHL last season where this is the first game in town. Natives might flock to it just because it's something to do besides Longhorn football. They still have to combat the problems of It Is Hot AF in Texas When the MLS Season Plays, which is a problem for Houston and Dallas, as well as the Stadium Not Being In the Urban Core (which was Precourt's "issue" with Mapre) and the Anthony Precourt Royally Sucks problem, but I think they'll be better than the other two Texas MLS markets. 

 

What's super lame is Austin got a team without having to go through the expansion rigmarole, which is why Garber's actions in this whole debacle will never make sense to me. 

 

 

PvO6ZWJ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/12/2018 at 5:21 PM, Wings said:

Great news. Now on with the show: Columbus vs. Cincinnati in MLS. 


I've said since the Crew relocation news dropped that if they can just find a way to extend the Crew to be in Columbus until 2019 then people will see the potential in this part of the map. The Hell Is Real Derby will something for all soccer fans to see.

 

I also kind of feel like now that the Crew have gone through this scare that the market will be more solidified and interested in coming out to show support. Don't know what you got until it's (almost) gone and all that. This was the first time Columbus has ever had to fight for their MLS status so the locals might be more resolved to turn out to show support. 

PvO6ZWJ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/13/2018 at 5:09 PM, Gothamite said:

Texas is a big place.  Moreover, Austin is not Houston.  And neither one of those is the Dallas suburbs.  I am very hesitant to draw too many conclusions there.

"Texas:  It's Like a Whole Other Country."

The rest of America:  "And we wish you'd go back to that."

 

39 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

I think I speak for my friends in Columbus when I say that Satan himself would be a step up from one Jay Anthony Precourt Jr.

Haslam is a criminal and a bad sports owner, but at least he's going to keep the team from moving. Let's deal with one rich :censored: at a time. 

 

What's super lame is Austin got a team without having to go through the expansion rigmarole, which is why Garber's actions in this whole debacle will never make sense to me. 

 

With Haslam as the owner, in five years you may be wishing they had moved.  Jimmy Haslam is to professional sports what the Olive Garden is to... professional sports.

 

The expansion process wasn't followed McCarthy, but the end result is the same while, remarkably, providing everyone involved a "win-win."  MLS issues Haslam a new membership.  Haslam gets to play hero by keeping the team in Columbus.  Precourt keeps his MLS membership, collect expansion receipts, spend a few years focused on building anew in Austin rather than a few months relocating.  And the MLS collects $100 million (or more) that they can't collect right now because no municipality aside from Cincinnati and Nashville were dumb enough to meet its expansion criteria to their satisfaction.  You can't beat that kind of deal with a stick.

nav-logo.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Mac the Knife said:

"Texas:  It's Like a Whole Other Country."

The rest of America:  "And we wish you'd go back to that."

 

Nah, we need Texas.  I don’t ever have to hear anybody complain that New Yorkers are self-centered so long as a single Texan draws breath.  ? 

 

Seriously, though, I look at Texas the same way I do California; it’s silly to consider the place all one market.  Just as the presence of the Quakes, Galaxy and LAFC doesn’t mean Sacramento shouldn’t get a team, neither do Dallas and Houston have anything to say about Austin. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

What’s super lame is Austin got a team without having to go through the expansion rigmarole, which is why Garber's actions in this whole debacle will never make sense to me. 

 

I would love to see the contract Precourt signed when he bought the club.  That might explain some of it. 

 

We heard a lot of griping about Miami not having to be part of the expansion process, all of it coming from people who didn’t know about or didn’t understand Beckham’s contractual rights.  Garber didn’t have to help Beckham (and he really didn’t), but he couldn’t stop him either. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Gothamite said:

We heard a lot of griping about Miami not having to be part of the expansion process, all of it coming from people who didn’t know about or didn’t understand Beckham’s contractual rights.  Garber didn’t have to help Beckham (and he really didn’t), but he couldn’t stop him either. 

 

What most don't comprehend with respect to MLS is that its 'expansion process' isn't one in the traditional sense, due to its single entity structure.  They can call it an expansion process if they want, but what they're doing is searching for partners to admit into their LLC - basically a capital call, only trying to raise it from outside sources rather than from within.

 

Precourt acquired one of the "A/E" memberships in MLS as I mentioned earlier.  I'd love to see that contract as well, but MLS' operating agreement doesn't give him the right to relocate a team unilaterally, member or no.  That's only accomplished by a supermajority vote of the members, and I'm guessing he didn't have, and wasn't going to get, the votes.  Under the terms of the operating agreement this created something of a stalemate in that you have an LLC member who has a right to operate a team in a certain market, but who's telling his partners after a certain date, he's refusing to do so.

 

So as a company MLS had five options:

  1. Let Precourt continue as an "A/E Member" and go to Austin.  But again, he didn't have the votes for that move.
  2. Terminate his "A/E" membership for cause and buy him out.  But the LLC doesn't have the cash to do that; the 'expansion' scratch they're getting - the $150 million from Cincinnati and Nashville, isn't coming in chunky style.  It's coming in installments.
  3. Find someone to buy out Precourt and his "A/E" membership.  That they did, but Precourt had to be willing to sell, and he wasn't.
  4. Allow Precourt to move to Austin in exchange for trading in his "A/E" membership for a new class of membership (Orlando City is MLS' "Class J" member, so I'm not sure what letter designation it'd be up to now).  MLS would then either (i) sell the "A/E" membership to Haslam, or (ii) sell the "A" membership to Haslam and terminate the "E" membership.  (confused yet?)
  5. Issue Haslam the new "Class X" (or whatever) membership, and draft a separate agreement allowing Precourt to operate his "A/E" membership in Austin.

If the partners of MLS were smart, they took Option 4, as it would terminate one of the Class E memberships it had to sell to current members to raise capital back when the league was teetering on the edge of disaster.  The history of this will read that Austin got an expansion franchise.  The technical reality of that may be true, or that Haslam got an expansion franchise and Precourt got to move.

 

In retrospect this could be a win-win or a lose-lose.  It could be win/win from the perspective that it sends a message to the other partners in the LLC:  unless we decide otherwise, you are where you are.  It also allows MLS to plausibly pare back its 4-team expansion to the 2 it's already chosen, arguing that Miami and Austin took up the slots they'd intended.

 

But it could be a lose/lose in that from this the partners glean that if they choose to move, they can hold their partners hostage and ultimately get what they want - and that thanks to this precedent, the end result could be unwanted expansion.  That's not a business partnership I'd be terribly comfortable being in.

nav-logo.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But I think the thing I'll never get is Garber constructed this scheme to get investors to buy into the league for a hefty expansion free, plus application fees for expansion and then let a random guy circumvent all of that. Precourt bought the Crew for basically half of that price always with the intention to move the club to Austin. What's never made sense is throughout most of the past year Garber encouraged this guy's loopholing of his expansion racket. If Garber wanted Austin he could've gotten an expansion fee from someone with deeper pockets than Anthony Precourt, someone who's less of a dumb prick than Anthony Precourt, without incurring the terrible PR that came with trying to move the Crew, without laying the blueprint for the next rich dick to circumvent MLS' expansion process. 

 

It all worked out for Columbus in the end so all's well that ends well and Austin got stuck with the fat faced trust fund vulture, but good gravy it was handled terribly. 

PvO6ZWJ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're making two fundamental, perhaps misguided, presumptions here though.  The first is that MLS wanted to be in Austin, and the second that Garber knew what the hell he was doing with respect to Precourt in the first place.  I don't think either is necessarily the case.

 

Precourt has a little Eddie Lampert in him - get your foot in the door, gain enough trust to put yourself in a solid position with some leverage, then apply that leverage for what's your ultimate end game.  With Sears, Lampert figured out as far back as 2005 that there was a way to bleed that company (and KMart along with it) bone dry, siphoning off its assets to other of his own entities while leaving the body that was responsible for all of it to slowly dry rot from within.  For years he suckered everyone into believing he was trying to resurrect Sears when, in fact, he was deliberately burying it.

 

Precourt bought his MLS membership and Columbus' operating rights intending to relocate them.  He knew that once he got in the door, that status gave him sufficient leverage to force the LLC's hand in some fashion; the only question would be how.  It's a leverage he'd not hold with any of the "big four" leagues because of their status as unincorporated associations vs. a limited liability company.  In the former, the issue would be resolved (albeit messily) by simply terminating Precourt's membership in the association; the premise being that the club was an independent entity, and as such joined at will and was expelled by its internal termination process.

 

But because MLS is a limited liability company, Precourt has a financial stake in the company, just in the same way Lampert does as a Sears shareholder.  He has direct equity, which makes the matter of removing him from the equation considerably more difficult.  He's going to Austin and he's going to get what he wanted, but in doing so he's got some very pissed off partners who feel this whole deal cost them upwards of $300 million in capital infusions.  They might be businessmen at heart, but they're not going to forget this, either.

nav-logo.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some stadia news:

 

Detroits expansion bid will take a hit as the proposal to retrofit Ford Field with a retractable roof has now been scrapped.

 

Meanwhile FC Cincinnati will begin to prepare the site for their new west end stadium in mid November as high school football season on the site is wrapping up. It will hold a groundbreaking ceremony in mid December with major construction to beginning in March, with a target opening date of March 2021.

Signature intentionally left blank

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.