It’d been clear for a couple days now, but a formal press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame confirmed Nashville as one of two expansion franchises that could begin play as early as 2020 in Major League Soccer. With Los Angeles FC set to join the league in 2018 as the 23rd club, Nashville is now MLS’s 24th side and the third team in the Southeastern United States (Atlanta and Orlando being the other two).
It turns out spending millions of dollars on manager Andre Villas-Boas and immediate want-aways Carlos Tevez and Jackson Martinez amounts to little more than burning money for the Chinese Super League. According to a recent audit by accounting firm PwC and as reported by Goal, the CSL’s clubs are currently in a combined debt of over $600 million.
On December 6 in New York City, four Major League Soccer expansion hopefuls will stand in front of the league’s expansion committee and commissioner Don Garber and make their case to be one of two new sides slated to begin play in 2020. They’ll talk about things like business metrics (“F*ck that,” says Columbus), stadium plans and making bank.
Maybe you haven’t heard, but the U.S. will not be participating in the 2018 World Cup in Russia. But that hasn’t stopped Americans from purchasing more tickets for next summer’s tournament than any other country outside the host nation. And the U.S. isn’t the only country that won’t be competing in Russia to rank in the Top 10 in World Cup ticket sales.
Botafogo took the pitch with an unusual shirt sponsor in what could be a first for professional football on Monday: a YouTube star’s brand on the team’s jersey. Botafogo wore their iconic black-and-white kits with the logo for “Neto’s” located just above the team crest and a logo for Brazilian YouTube star Felipe Neto on the right breast against Palmeiras on Monday.
We’re entering the second week of FIFA corruption trials for three men in New York City and already the court cases are providing more entertainment than an HBO series. The FIFA scandal keeps getting weirder, and that’s not really a good thing for fans of the game, but it’s great for fans of an interesting narrative.
Here’s a pro tip for all you executives out there who want to run a professional soccer league: make sure your best team doesn’t disband the same week it wins the league championship.
Speaking of, it’s been one helluva week for the San Francisco Deltas — henceforth to be referred to as NASL’s bottle rockets. The Deltas came, they saw, they conquered then they got the hell out of Dodge, all within a span of two years.
There’s a proverb or two that probably apply here, something about counting eggs before they hatch or putting the cart before the horse. But this is Major League Soccer, where allocation money and salary caps make fools of us all and expansion is the single greatest boon to owners’ pocketbooks since skyboxes. So really, this is business as usual.
Back before Anthony Precourt invested in the Columbus Crew in 2013, the Crew had a decidedly punk feel. Prior to going with a Bundesliga-inspired crest that’s actually quite nice, the Crew boasted the most ruffian logo in all of American sports with three dudes wearing construction hats beneath a giant stylization of the word “Crew”. It was hardcore, a tradition that’s been vociferously kept alive by the Nordecke supporters’ group and all who’ve given their voice to the #SavetheCrew movement.
Atlanta United set the MLS season attendance record in its first year in the league and fans did more than just show up — they bought plenty of jerseys. Paraguayan sensation Miguel Almiron had the top-selling MLS jersey for the 2017 season. The Atlanta United midfielder had five teammates with him in the list of the top-selling MLS jerseys released by Major League Soccer on Friday.
Below is the complete list of the 25 top-selling MLS jerseys: