MLS Expansion: Ottawa Entering The Game?

This really is no joke folks. A possible expansion club in the Canadian capital in the cards for Major League Soccer? According to this article (in French), MLS officials have recently been in expansion talks with owners of NHL’s Ottawa Senators about a possible club.

Not a whole lot of meat from the article to translate for you all here. Weird reading french articles and actually understanding them (I guess three years of high school French paid off huh?). Anyways, basically it says the two sides were meeting to discuss the possibilities for a club in the near future, more likely after the 2010 season due to the terriroty rights that Toronto FC has on Canada right now.

It also talked about the leading men of MLS meeting with owners in other Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal.

Meeting with the forth largest city in Canada only tells me one thing about Don Garber and the rest of the MLS front office. They want another team in Canada. While I honestly don’t buy Ottawa being that next expansion site for the league, I am totally coming to the conclusion that they want another club in Canada, and probably one close to Toronto. Does that mean Vancouver is out of the mix? No, but this really tells me that they want to put pressure on Montreal and Vancouver to get their stuff in order so they can pick between the two within the next year.

Some may feel different about it, but that’s exactly how I see things playing out. The league uses this as pressure on those other two cities, if they both fail then they could end up in Ottawa. Who knows. But this really tells me they want at least two Canadian teams in the league. You know what, I’m cool with that.