WVHooligan - Soccer Blog

1 | Scott

February 27th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

I’ve been rooting for Philly to get a franchise all along, and was upset when Seattle got it over them. not loving that name tho…sounds like a WNBA team. The next cities in the running should be Portland, Montreal, St. Louis, Miami, Cinci/Cleveland, Vancouver, and I know this might sound weird, but Providence RI.
Seriously, though, there is a huge Latino population, the city has a population of about 200,000, the state (which is easily accessible from anywhere- and hour from north to south!) has over 1,000,000 people, and there could be a potential stadium sight- the Brown University football field. it seats 20,000, and with renovations, could potentially be made into an MLS-caliber stadium. Plus, attendance for the state’s three college teams last year was very good- 1,500 for Brown, 500 or so for Providence College, and about the same for URI. I know the Rev’s are about 30 minutes away, but to Rhode Islanders, that seems like almost 2 hours (trust me). Plus, Gillette stadium is really out of the way, and traffic is so horrible, that’s it’s not even worth it to go to a game there. Brown Stadium has two bus routes sandwiching it…it’s located on the East Side, notoriously known as the wealthy part of Providence. Combine all those families with nothing to do on a saturday, the Latino population, and any other soccer fans, and you’ve got yourself a decent crowd.

Just putting that out there.

2 | drew.epperley

February 27th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

MLS names have largely been terrible before…though you’re right it sounds way more like a WNBA name when you really think about it. I am still hoping for Athletico Philadelphia or Philadelphia Athletics…