MLS Grabs The Money As New York City Football Club is Born
So now we know… it’s all about the money. Always has been and always will be.
It doesn’t seem to matter what you’ve built, what you’ve created, what you’ve been working towards and what you’ve accomplished. It’s simply all about the money.
It’s now official. The MLS is expanding and the team that will join the ranks in 2015 is Manchester City. Oh sorry! I meant New York City Football Club.
Yep, that’s right. Despite other more valid claims, most certainly from a footballing (soccer) point of view, it’s money that matters most.
Manchester City have now announced their plans at the HQ of Major League Soccer on Fifth Avenue, New York. The club revealed that although they will be the majority stakeholders, they will also form an alliance with the New York Yankees. A stadium will have to be built, mostly likely in Queens and it’s more than likely the team will also wear a sky blue strip.
City Chief Executive Ferran Soriano said “The New York City club will have an identity of its own, but obviously using the resources and synergies of Manchester City. We haven’t decided but it might well be that the team is going to play in sky blue. We will create a whole new organization. We will have a director of football, we will have a coach, but we don’t know yet if he will be American, South American or English. The first thing is appointing a director of football because we need to create a team from scratch within the next 18 months. We need to select players and ensure that when we start playing in April 2015, we have a competitive team on the pitch.”
So there we have it. That’s how you get to become an MLS team. You buy it and then worry about how you’ll create it. No more should team owners take time to build a winning team and whole structure to support it. Just write a check to “MLS – We Don’t Care Where It Comes From.”
Sorry Don Garber, but this isn’t us being bitter. It’s just our opinion that this is simply the wrong way to go about encouraging other teams, other owners and other investors to develop the game. When all someone has to do is wade into town, throw their check book around and be given the rights to a franchise, we worry about how the great game is going to develop in the United States.
PS. And quite why it’s been named “Football” Club instead of “Soccer” club is another mystery. Talk about confusing the American consumer even more.
