Merritt Paulson signs the official expansion letter with MLS. (photo via Portland Timbers)

The final hurdle to bring Major League Soccer to Portland was cleared on today when the Portland City Council voted 4-1 to approve $31 million in funding to renovate PGE Park. The vote means the Portland Timbers expansion team can begin play in 2011 as planned.

As we all know Portland and Vancouver will join the league next year to put MLS at 18 clubs. Portland had a long history of issues with getting the proper money to renovate PGE Park but with that all now out of the way the club can focus on getting everything in line for next season.

Great news for the Rose City.

I am glad to say it is Friday. Somehow this week has flown by me here but thankfully we have a weekend full of soccer ahead of us here. Two games tonight, with one just about underway in New York, and plenty more tomorrow and Sunday. Nearly every game has playoff implications surrounding them. I’d say all games do except for the Dallas-KC game, since those two really have no shot at the playoffs despite not being eliminated from contention yet.

Tonight I do have a couple links worth throwing out there with a couple other random thoughts mixed in.

First up a quick note about the progress of the U20 National team, who are on their way to play in the U20 World Cup later this month. Today they took down Trinidad and Tobago 2-0. Bryan Arguez and Brek Shea scored goals in friendly victory that was the final World Cup tune up for the squad. I know a lot was said yesterday about this club thanks to Thomas Rongen’s comments about the lack of depth if you will surrounding this year’s team.

The US is in a tough group with Germany, Cameroon and South Korea. Germany won the European qualifying for this tournament last year and Cameroon placed second in the African qualifying. Needless to say this could be a really difficult group for the US.

I’ve gotten word via email recently that we should see some San Jose stadium renderings very soon to go along with the other stadiums around the league in development in places like Kansas City and Houston. The club is expected to reveal designs for a new stadium this weekend. Also from what I’ve been told and read across these Internets is that this stadium won’t be anything special, so don’t get your hopes up for a super crazy design or something special like a Red Bull Arena or Rio Tinto Stadium.

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Portland Expansion Rooted In Controversy

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A very interesting article on SI.com today about Portland’s expansion process thus far. I love the line that called Portland owner Merritt Paulson Mark Cuban-like to go after what he wanted here. Paulson has done a lot of work to get the city a new stadium for the baseball team that he owns and for the city to give him money to revamp PGE Park so the Timbers could play in it.

There’s still a ways to go with Portland here I feel but we should still see the Timbers Army in MLS in two years time.

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Old Dallas Document Talks Jersey Sponsor

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Buzz Carrick posted this very interesting article today about an old PDF that circulated to potential jersey sponsors and a few others like Carrick. It posts some interesting numbers that are a couple years old now that tell what Dallas was looking for in a jersey sponsor. The numbers seem to be pretty on par with other team’s sponsorship deals right now. I still feel that Dallas is another year or so away from getting a sponsor. When you have a team that plays this poorly for nearly two straight years and your attendance is as terrible as Dallas’ is right now the sponsorship dollars just aren’t there for things like this.

Dallas along with Colorado, New England, and Kansas City still have yet to get kit sponsors. Colorado looks very close to getting one based on their current kits. As for the other two clubs, I don’t have any information at this time where they stand at getting a jersey sponsor. My money would be on KC beating the Revs to the sponsorship punch though.

I don’t have a fancy name for any of this yet but feel free to come up with one if you’d like.

Reuter’s Soccer Blog Interview with The Don

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First of all I didn’t even realize Reuter’s had their own soccer blog. Secondly, this is a pretty decent interview with MLS commissioner Don Garber. Of course they go over the usual stuff of how the league is trying to attract those causal fans that attended all those games this summer and what not. Then the usual expansion news. Nothing really new of note there but from the quotes it sounds like Montreal is a sure bet while Miami or somewhere down in the south isn’t too far off if things present themselves correctly for the league.

Vermes Introduced as Interim Coach in KC

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It is never easy to fire a guy in the middle of the season and improve from it. Chicago nearly did it a couple years ago when they booted Dave Sarachan and replaced him with Juan Carlos Osorio. I just don’t see that sort of thing happening in KC this year. Good on KC to at least keep the interim hire in-house a bit with Vermes. Who can KC go after for the full time gig though is the main question. Honestly it may be time to go after someone like Paul Merinar from New England or John Spensor in Houston. No doubt their names will be thrown out in the next couple of months like they always are this time of year.

Cooper’s Dad Blasts MLS

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What can you say, its a dad protecting his son in some ways and calling out what he sees that is wrong. I can’t blame him in the least bit for feeling this way. Kenny Cooper senior helps represent his son and I know a year ago he wanted this move for Kenny.

“I still have difficulty understanding in this league, as I expressed to the commissioner in Toronto last July, I can’t understand when you have young American players who can play anywhere in the world and they’re somewhat punished because they’re Americans,” he says. “As someone who’s been in the league and the country as a coach, and the system for 38 years, I think that this league at times would rather reward a proven failure than unlimited potential.”

A lot of folks still worry about this that the league is letting go of quality young Americans for over priced and over the hill foreign players. The league does need to find a better way to keep young home grown talent, that’s for sure. I’m sure it will be something addressed down the road but in the meantime we will continue to lose quality players from the league like Cooper. I think the biggest hit will come when/if Landon Donovan heads back to Europe for good. Garber sees Donovan as the poster child for American players in the league (as he should) and losing him would be killer to the league’s image.

From PDL to EPL

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This is a story I should have discussed a while back but missed when family was in town I suppose. Wake Forest product Cody Arnoux signed a one year deal with EPL side Everton. The one-year deal is basically a trail with the reserve squad but still even that isn’t bad at all.

Arnoux was an NCAA All-American last season and was projected to be a top pick in the 2010 MLS SuperDraft if he had finished his final season at Wake Forest and declared for the MLS draft. Instead he went the Marcus Tracy route to Europe, bypassed MLS for a European contract.

Another guy that would have been a big deal in MLS. Hell two guys if you count Tracy. Things gotta change here.

Ideas for Portland

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The Nation writer Dave Zirin lays out financial dealings in Portland for Timbers owner Merritt Paulson to rebuild PGE Park for entrance into MLS. He offers up alternatives to the current deal. I guess this is more of things to come from the Rose City. Folks not quite for what’s going on presenting their opinions and what not.

More on Montreal Expansion

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I’m probably a day late on this article but oh well, basically it is more of the same from our friends to the north on the Montreal expansion. From what some are saying we could know something regarding a team for either the 2011 or 2012 season by the end of the summer. Honestly, I expect an announcement around MLS Cup time.

Portland city council has approved a plan to allow both MLS and minor league baseball in the city. PGE Park will get renovated as planned and the baseball team will get their new stadium.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution to support starting negotiations with Merritt Paulson over a financing plan to renovate PGE Park to accommodate a Major League Soccer team.

The move effectively decouples the $37 million PGE Park project from a proposed new $48 million baseball park for Paulson’s minor-league Portland Beavers.

Both the Beavers and Paulson’s minor-league soccer franchise the Portland Timbers share PGE Park. But because MLS requires soccer-specific stadiums for its franchises, Paulson is pursuing separate stadium projects for both clubs.

But efforts to find a location for the baseball park have stalled, leading to concerns that Paulson could miss his Sept. 1 deadline to secure a financing plan for PGE Park. The MLS team would start play in 2011.

Again, hopefully this is the last time we have to go back and forth on this matter. The stadium renovation has been a key issue with the Portland expansion deal and hopefully this matter is coming close to an end and the club can move forward in those renovations.

No word on if the scarves will just say Portland 2011 or if Timbers will be included on it.

What: Rally and Press Conference Announcement

When: 9:30 a.m., Friday March 20

Where: Portland Hilton
921 SW Sixth Avenue, Portland Oregon

And the Timbers Army and supporters who rallied a couple weeks ago are asked to show up once again and be even louder than before.

What do you make of this news? I know I am excited to see Portland get in. Funny how the league decided to just do it all at once while they were out in Vancouver.

With the 2009 MLS season about to kick off this week and everything that’s happened the week gone by, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the future regarding our league.

Last week we saw drama from the Pacific northwest to the Gateway City. The fact that the vote in Portland on Wednesday would not only dictate how far their own bid would go, it would also influence the Ottawa bid and especially the St. Louis bid. However, even before all this 11th hour drama began, what looks like the one certain lock has been the quiet, yet steady bid the whole time since all original bids were announced back in the fall.

At first we all thought Montreal would be in instantly including yours truly. Montreal already have a state of the art stadium that can easily expanded to meet the needs of MLS. The Impact already have a rivalry with Toronto FC and it would be enhanced in league play. Of course not forgetting fan support. It looked like potential ownership had deep enough pockets but maybe not deep enough as we thought.

Arthur Blank and his Atlanta bid dropping out was not a complete surprise as he has apparently lost some money in this downturn and it was always an underdog at best. Atlanta should be kept in mind for the future though, but at the moment other cities are better fits currently then them.

Then the biggest surprise of them all thus far, was Miami dropping out of the race. Not only having a billionaire potential owner from Bolivia, but with the help of arguably the biggest club side in the world joining the bid was something MLS simply could not ignore not only because of what the name FC Barcelona stands for globally, but because the club already have a marketing partnership with SUM for the next five years.

I for one was never a fan of the Miami bid for a number of reasons and the only reason why Claure and company lasted as long as they did was because of the Spanish giants involvement. In the future MLS should try the Miami market again depending on the economic climate and measuring it up with other bids that may come into play. Currently there are just more deserving cities right now.

So with two near enough certainties dropping out early the field, it then became an open race for the most part.

Vancouver has been the one bid that nobody heard a peep from and at the moment, that is good news. Everything has seemed to fall in place in BC: deep pockets, stadium deal done and fan support. Of course stranger things have happened such as two early favorites dropping out so don’t count them in until it’s officially announced, but it does look an almost certainty.

If Vancouver is in, that leaves a closer race for the last spot. Portland got what they needed Wednesday, however, they were not counting on Anheuser-Busch joining Albert Pujols and Jeff Cooper the same day. Who would have thought competition for expansion franchises in MLS would get this competitive five years ago?

It doesn’t take a Ivy league graduate to figure out that Portland would be an excellent fit for MLS. They have the owner with deep pockets, extremely strong fan support with an instant local rivalry with the Sounders and Whitecaps (if Vancouver gets in) and now have officially a stadium deal in place. Although it seems that $15m must come up from somewhere which looks like the final hurdle that needs to be cleared.

St. Louis must be thinking what else have we got to do to impress Don Garber after losing the 2010 expansion race to Philadelphia and possibly the 2011 race. The question that remains is not so much a potential ownership group with deep pockets now because of the events that took place last week, the question is are they too late? One wonders why Jeff Cooper could not get Anheuser-Busch on board much earlier. However, it certainly gives MLS much to think about by extending the decision to March 31st.

The other Canadian bid in the capital did raise a number of eyebrows when the bids were announced. Classed as an underdog just as Atlanta was is a credit to the Ottawa bid that they have lasted this long. However, just as the Atlanta and Miami bids before them, they should be considered for future expansion should the league choose to expand further. Right now, there are other bids that just fit better currently plus the stadium deal hasn’t been officially put in place yet.

Jeff Cooper said recently in a interview with Gol TV he thinks all original seven bids were good enough and in an ideal environment MLS would like all seven bids to join the league. It’s hard to disagree with that statement. Unfortunately, putting aside all the paperwork and obstacles that need to be cleared, the truth is the talent pool is not big enough to accommodate seven new clubs all at once in North America. Include the current salary cap in the equation then it would be more difficult to bring in more foreign players. However, with roster size changes, number of foreign players per team, the cap will increase and therefore teams will have a little bit more room to be flexible in bringing in new talent. Should MLS continue to expand by another two teams in 2012 or 2013, the choices should be obvious ones.

MLS should do whatever it takes to get the Montreal Impact in the league simply because it makes so much sense in every way and there is too much potential there to ignore. The other should go to either Portland or St. Louis whichever is the one that loses in the current race.

At the moment Portland is favorite and all signs point to them winning, but just as Miami and Montreal showed us nothing is guaranteed.

Portland has voted in soccer. In a tight 3-2 vote, the city passed the plan to get Portland an expansion club in 2011 along with Vancouver.

Stay tuned for more.

But for hype-sake here is a lovely video via The Offside Rules.


Portland Mayor Sam Adams Pitches MLS from The Offside Rules on Vimeo.

Paulson denys any fit that was thrown at the meeting. It appears both sides are playing some hard ball with one another to get a deal here. Thankfully this should all come to a resolution next week when the city votes on everything.

It all does give me a thought, and Duane Rollins over at the 24th Minute makes a good point about it as well. Does the league really have a plan if Portland falls through on their bid?

I’ve said it before, there could be a deal being worked behind closed doors with St. Louis to get a team there. MLS Commissioner Don Garber has stated a lot that he really wants a club there. “That being said, I’ve said many times before we want a team in St. Louis,” Garber said. “We’re working hard to help.”

Or could the league fall back on another plan to maybe get a city like Montreal in?

Man next Wednesday’s vote in Portland can’t come soon enough here. Once we hear what happens there we will really know for sure what the league is going to do and probably not do.