
Chester Stadium currently under construction. (Photo via Philadelphia Union)
Editor’s Note: Geoff Reid appears on WVHooligan each week. Today he is back to discuss something that is very close to home, the soon to be expansion Philadelphia Union. Geoff lives just 15 minutes away from the new club. Feel free to leave Geoff your thoughts below.
With just under six months before Major League Soccer’s newest club takes the field in Seattle in the 2010 opener, I thought it be good to give an update on where my local club are in preparation. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, we had the official announcement on February 28th, 2008 in Chester, Pennsylvania. While I haven’t been down in the area all that long, I always had concerns about MLS putting a team in the Delaware Valley. At the time, I thought St. Louis would have been a much more viable option, however, since that point I can safely say I’ve jumped on the bandwagon.
The club’s owners right from the start seemed like they were up against it: economic downturn, trying to sell the idea of re-building a historic, but rundown city by having a team and stadium as it’s crown jewel in a complete redevelopment of the area to the local government and promising to be a success all at the same time. Needless to say they accomplished that first part.
The ownership also had to field questions regarding if they still had enough cash to pull everything off with one of them losing a big chunk of money a year ago when the stock market dropped. The rumors of FC Barcelona even coming in and taking a stake was discussed but nothing came about after the Catalans decided to pull out of the Miami bid. There was also talk of the Montreal Impact coming in 2010 and pushing Philadelphia back to 2011. The panic button could have easily been pushed, but the ownership has stuck to their guns and currently the only news coming out of the club is good news. Sure there has been hurdles to jump over since the planning officially began on February 28, 2008, but careful brainstorming in all aspects while making small tweaks to the big overall picture has shown the group knows exactly what they are doing.
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