St. Louis Soccer United - St. Louis is Next Up for New Soccer Team

St. Louis is Next Up for New Soccer Team

Tom Timmermann
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 29, 2008

CHESTER, Pa. — Major League Soccer introduced Philadelphia as its 16th team Thursday, with a gala bash in an old electrical plant on the waterfront of this city just south of Philadelphia's airport.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber said St. Louis is now at the front of the line to be team No. 17.

"I've said this many times before, and I'll say it again," Garber said. "We'd like St. Louis to be our next team. ... We want a team in St. Louis. We need teams in the Midwest."

Garber emphasized that the only impediment — "The last piece of the puzzle" — is the financial depth of Jeff Cooper's ownership group. Solve that problem, he reiterated, and St. Louis will get a team.

"St. Louis, like Philadelphia, is a very ethnic market," Garber said. "It's the birthplace of soccer in America. It deserves a team, and we're hoping to be able to finalize something, but we have work to do on the ownership side, and until we solidify the ownership we won't put a team there. ... I'm confident it's a when, not an if, but we still have work to do to deliver on the when."

Back in the Midwest, Cooper said he was making progress on that issue and that in about a month he hopes to announce new members of his ownership group — investors that should bring his bid to the financial levels MLS is seeking.

"This puts us in line to be at the head of the class," he said. "This is our moment in the sun, and we're ready to make our case. I think we have a three-, four-, five-month window in which to do that, without a credible bid from another city. The finish line is in sight, and I feel good about it."

The league plans to expand to 18 teams and then stop for a while, and Garber said there was no definite timeline for when the next two teams would be added.

No other city is close to being as far along in the expansion process as St. Louis. Miami has plans for a soccer-specific stadium to be built on the site of the Orange Bowl, but there is no ownership group in place, and a provision in the city's stadium plan says that construction would have to be done at the same time as the Florida Marlins' new baseball stadium, which severely shortens the time frame for an ownership group to come forward.

The league has wanted a team in Philadelphia, the nation's fourth largest television market, since its inception, but the city lacked an ownership group and a facility. Finally, a group headed by Jay Sugarman, chairman and CEO of iStar Financial, struck a deal to build a $500 million entertainment, retail, residential and business-development complex on the waterfront of Chester, a community that has seen better days.