St. Louis voters to decide whether to help fund MLS stadium

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http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/article142252119.html

St. Louis voters to decide whether to help fund MLS stadium

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http://www.wfsb.com/story/35050517/st-louis-voters-to-decide-whether-to-help-fund-mls-stadium

St. Louis voters to decide whether to help fund MLS stadium

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http://www.abc10.com/news/local/sacramento/sacramento-republic-fc-fans-celebrate-home-opener/427696258

Sacramento Republic FC fans celebrate home opener

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https://mlsmultiplex.com/2017/04/02/mls-expansion-st-louis-don-garber-rally-nwsl/

MLS Expansion: St. Louis – Don Garber, a Rally and the NWSL

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https://portcitydaily.com/2017/04/02/sports-former-wilmington-hammerhead-mark-briggs-appointed-to-head-coach-of-real-monarchs-slc/

Former Wilmington Hammerhead Mark Briggs appointed head coach of Real Monarchs SLC

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http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/sports/article.html/content/news/articles/bhsn/2017/4/1/tampa_bay_rowdies_de.html

Tampa Bay Rowdies defeat Toronto FC II 4-0

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http://wfla.com/2017/04/01/tampa-bay-rowdies-beat-toronto-in-4-0-victory-move-to-2-0-in-usl/

Tampa Bay Rowdies beat Toronto in 4-0 victory, move to 2-0 in USL

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http://www.phillyvoice.com/watch-professional-soccer-player-scores-savage-backyard-goal-his-son/

WATCH: Professional soccer player scores savage backyard goal on his son

Scottish soccer player Neill Collins has found the back of the net a few dozen times in his 15-year playing career, but he may have saved his best goal for Saturday. I mean, have you ever made the opposing goalkeeper cry after scoring?

The 33-year-old center back currently plays for the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the NASL and his resume includes stops at several European clubs such as Sunderland, Wolverhampton and Leeds United.

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http://edmontonjournal.com/sports/soccer/fc-edmonton-open-north-american-soccer-league-season-on-the-road

FC Edmonton open North American Soccer League season on the road

This (below) is a highly selective headline taken from the announcement/leak last month that Miami Beckham United had missed another major deadline/announcement; instead going with the "expects to announce...within weeks" dodge/spin from the original story (also below). Well, it's been four weeks/a month, nothing. Or do they mean "weeks" as in another 52 weeks (another year)? The blog reader comments are hilariously delusional.
 
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http://www.thenextmiami.com/funding-announcement-150m-beckham-soccer-stadium-expected-within-weeks/

Beckham Expects To Announce Funding For $150M Soccer Stadium Within Weeks

By TNM Staff on March 6, 2017

David Beckham could announce a deal with an investor group to fund an Overtown soccer stadium within weeks, according to the Herald.

Two investor groups are said to be competing to invest in the stadium project, while two others have dropped out.

Qatar and Wes Edens are no longer negotiating after their proposals were rejected. Qatar wanted more control than was offered, while Edens wanted to move the stadium close to All Aboard Florida’s MiamiCentral Brightline terminal.

The stadium is expected to cost about $150 million.

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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article136365588.html

For David Beckham, a scrapped Miami announcement and promises that a deal really (really) is near

Miami-Dade County

March 3, 2017 8:40 PM

By Douglas Hanks

Miami has watched three Major League Soccer seasons come and go since David Beckham announced his bid to bring a team to the city, but the group gathered at a Miami hotel earlier this year confidently mapped out a timetable for changing that.

With Beckham’s partners in talks with investor groups since the fall, the celebrity athlete’s Miami team was ready to talk logistics on going public. The squad of lobbyists, lawyers and public-relations executives discussed when to fly in Beckham to announce that they had raised the money needed to finally start building a 25,000-seat stadium in Overtown.

“We were actually talking about a date,” said one participant. “We kind of penciled it in.”

Their game plan: Reveal the partners who ended up signing on with Beckham at a press conference slated for Monday, right after MLS wrapped up its opening weekend.

Now it looks like Monday, March 6, 2017, will pass as another missed milestone in Beckham’s extended quest for an MLS soccer stadium in Miami. Barring a last-minute breakthrough, Beckham’s Miami representatives don’t expect any news in the coming days.

But they also insist that an agreement could be announced within a few weeks, with two competing sets of investors still in talks to help fund Beckham’s $150 million stadium a few blocks north of the Miami River.

Publicly, Miami Beckham United — the placeholder name for what’s essentially a negotiating team right now, backed by Beckham and partners Marcelo Claure (CEO of Sprint) and Simon Fuller (Beckham’s agent and a creator of “American Idol”) — has stuck to an optimistic line so familiar it’s become a punchline on Twitter.

“Miami Beckham United is 100 percent committed to Miami,” Schwartz Media, Beckham’s local publicist, said in a statement on Twitter on Tuesday. “We’re making progress toward our goal of fielding a team in 2019, and we appreciate the strong support of our fans as our kick-off draws closer.”

This account, based on public records and interviews with Beckham insiders and people who have spoken to them, extends a familiar pattern for Miami’s long-suffering MLS fans: Insistence from Beckham United that a deal continues to be within grasp, amid public signs of continued struggle.

While the Beckham group already paid $19 million for six acres of private land at the stadium site, it still needs three acres from a county-owned truck depot next door. But despite not having a deal in hand with Miami-Dade, Beckham’s team has made no move to restart the county talks that were active in the spring of 2016.

“I have not heard a word,” Leland Salomon, the county economic-development director charged with negotiating the deal, wrote Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s office in a Nov. 4 email. “When I last called their attorney (a couple of months ago) he told me they were still looking for a financial partner and would be back to us when they were set to go. Nothing since then.”

Overtown is the fourth location sought by Beckham, after failed bids at PortMiami, Miami’s waterfront Museum Park, and a site next to Marlins Park in Little Havana. Beckham has offered to pay market rate for the county land needed for the privately financed stadium, and members of his negotiation team say they’re confident enough of Miami-Dade’s support that they expect to close a deal quickly once they secure investor backing.

During the strategy session at the Epic hotel, the timetable included a Beckham announcement on Monday and then a last-minute appearance before the County Commission on Tuesday to jump start the land talks. Shortly after, Beckham’s group planned an appearance before the Miami City Commission to discuss the street closures and zoning changes needed to build the stadium.

Despite the wealth of Beckham and his partners, the stadium plan has hinged on dollars from other investors funding the bulk of the construction and development costs. Two suitors are known to have walked away since Beckham announced his stadium quest at a Miami press conference on Feb. 5, 2014 with Gimenez and MLS Commissioner Don Garber.

The Middle Eastern nation of Qatar backed out over how much control its entertainment arm could exercise on the franchise, according to sources on both sides of the deal. Wesley Edens, a top executive behind the Brightline railway, began talks in 2016 with the Beckham group but the negotiations fizzled when Edens wanted to move the site closer to the company’s planned train depot in downtown Miami.

In November, Beckham’s Miami team arranged a private meeting with Gimenez and what the mayor described as more than a dozen would-be investors in the stadium effort. Held in the Miami office of Beckham’s lobbying firm, Akerman, the group included Florida International University benefactor Steven Green, according to a source who was there. The participation of the wealthy former ambassador, whose $20 million gift put his name on FIU’s foreign-affairs school in 2015, wasn’t reported at the time.

Green, who represented the U.S. in Singapore under President Bill Clinton and once ran the Samsonite luggage company, did not respond to an email requesting comment Friday. Beckham representatives declined to identify the investors in talks with the stadium group. Gimenez also declined to reveal the identity of the investors he met in November.

If the November meeting with Gimenez hinted at momentum, the weeks that followed brought more discouraging news from the soccer front. Don Garber, MLS’s commissioner, told reporters on Dec. 15 that Beckham “needs to understand” that “it’s time for us to reach a conclusion” in Miami.

“Not everything you want to do gets done,” Garber said on the conference call dedicated to the league’s expansion plans. “Sometimes you have to take a step back, and if you can’t get it done, you move on.”

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbymcmahon/2017/04/02/nfl-may-be-reaching-the-end-of-stadium-building-cycle-but-more-modest-major-league-soccer-continues/#7c68f495cb87

NFL May Be Reaching The End Of Stadium Building Cycle, More Modest Major League Soccer Will Continue 

Bobby McMahon , 

Contributor

I cover the world's most popular sport, the bad, good and brilliant

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

With the Oakland Raiders opting to move to Las Vegas in time for the 2020 season on the back of a nearly $1B investment package offered up by the taxpayers of Nevada, ESPN has declared that a two-decade NFL stadium building blitz is coming to an end.

ESPN's Kevin Seifert estimates that the last 20 years have seen 21 new stadiums built, and 3 significantly renovated for NFL teams at a cost to the taxpayer of $6.7B.

Seifert noted that only two stadiums – the MetLife in New Jersey and the new home for the LA Rams – have been completely financed through private investment.

With the difference of only a few years, the NFL timeline matches up to the move to soccer-specific stadiums by MLS teams.

While the NFL made the move to mega-stadiums, MLS made a decision to largely abandon almost all of the large cavernous stadiums for smaller more intimate and atmospheric venues.

The Columbus Crew was the pioneer after playing its first three seasons at the 90,000 seat capacity Ohio Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University. For Crew games, the stadium was reconfigured to house around 25,000.

    Another soccer-specific stadium opening today. Always exciting to see the continued growth of @MLS that started here. #CrewSC #ForColumbuspic.twitter.com/6SiFZQkaAY

    — Arica Kress (@AricaKress) March 5, 2017

The construction cost of the Crew’s soccer-specific quarters completed in 1999, was just $30M. The stadium’s capacity has varied from 25,000 to the present day 20,000 and it has now reached the point where the Crew organization is considering building a new stadium

Since the Columbus Crew gamble – and it was a gamble almost twenty years ago – thirteen other soccer-specific stadiums housing MLS teams have been built with three more on the books in D.C., Los Angeles and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The New England Revolution also appears to be inching towards a long-overdue announcement.

    Congrats to @OrlandoCitySC on the amazing new stadium!!! Great addition to soccer specific stadiums in @MLS! #OCSC #ORLvNYC #MLS #MLSisBack pic.twitter.com/3Pm9N9Rmjo

    — Jason Foster (@JogaBonitoUSA) March 5, 2017

Despite the successes, the construction of such stadiums has not always been a slam-dunk. New York City FC is stuck playing in Yankee Stadium and a David Beckham-led consortium trying to build a soccer stadium in Miami that would house an expansion team has run into a number of brick walls.

Not surprisingly the cost of building soccer-specific stadiums has grown since the Crew’s initial foray although costs are nothing close to the $1B+ it is now costing to construct NFL mega-stadiums.

MLS owners have also grown more confident that there is money to be made and the bare-bones Crew model has been enhanced to the point where price points of $200M + are not uncommon.

In a recent edition of FourFourTwo, Tim Newcomb wrote an excellent piece on the evolution MLS stadiums.

The funding model for MLS stadiums has varied across the country with some builds receiving taxpayer funding and tax exemptions and incentives while others have been privately funded.

But not all the new MLS stadiums have been successful. Toyota Park, home to the Chicago Fire, is located in Bridgeview, Illinois and is the poster-child for build-it-but-they-may-not come.

The stadium was opened in 2006 at a cost of $100M with the 17,000 residents of Bridgeview backstopping a bond issue that financed the construction.

Sold as a catalyst for other revenue generating developments the stadium has operated at a loss – estimated at between $3M and $4M a year – and refinancing has nearly doubled Bridgeview’s debt exposure.

Last month Standard and Poor’s cut Bridgeview’s investment grade to triple B – two levels above junk – and issued a warning that another cut could be on the way.

Stadium development in Europe

As Everton became the latest Premier League team to announce plans to build a new stadium, Sky Sports produced a synopsis of five major stadium projects presently underway in Europe.

    Everton plans for £300m new stadium approved by Councilhttps://t.co/rWrecf2Kip pic.twitter.com/SAVNWWRxMH

    — LoveEvertonForum (@LuvEvertonForum) March 31, 2017

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http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/mls-stadium-evolution-safe-standing-canopies-tight-sidelines

Safe standing, canopies, tight sidelines mark evolution of MLS stadiums

Soccer-specific stadiums started nearly 20 years ago. Now, they are finally growing up.
 
by Tim Newcomb
Published
15 March 2017

Nearly every decision in the latest wave of MLS soccer-specific stadiums comes with a premium on creating environments boasting intimacy. Not the touchy-feely, quiet type of intimacy, but the loud, raucous style that puts tens of thousands of fans as close to one another and as on top of the pitch as possible.

Orlando City Stadium gives us a real-time example of the trend, even as we’re about to see soccer-specific designs opening next year for Minnesota United, D.C. United and Los Angeles Football Club that mimic the effort.

As MLS buildings grow in size, now expanding past the typical 18,000-seat designs of the past toward capacities of 25,000, the larger sizes come with a focus on creating an intense environment, says Bruce Miller, lead soccer architect for Populous, designers of the new venues in Orlando, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C.

“MLS is expanding right now while other sports are creating different seating types and shrinking capacity,” Miller tells FourFourTwo. “Twenty-five thousand will drive demand and create a great atmosphere. It is really giving our owners pause in terms of what the capacity should be and what they should be planning for in the future.”

And as 25,000 sits as a tipping point — buildings larger than 25,000 really require a second concourse to best serve the population with amenities — it has also creates amenity-rich designs that differ from MLS venues of yesteryear. No longer is bare-bones construction, such as the first soccer-specific venues we saw in 1999 into the mid-2000s, the order of the day. MLS owners can now afford more.

The most architecturally pleasing and atmosphere-creating element of what we’re seeing in current soccer-specific design, and what we will continue to see moving forward, is the  canopy, a feature rarely added to the cost of early MLS projects.

It’s not just a roof that shields the weather from the fans. A canopy gives venues a European-style design that also serves to reflect crowd noise back toward the pitch. To coincide, Miller says there are more seats between aisles in soccer venues — less in-game vendors allows this — and a tight continuous bowl around the pitch serves to “intensify the experience.”

“It is about 90 minutes front to back and really creating a stage for people to experience the game in that period of time,” Miller said. “The seating bowl has got a really intimate feel to it.”

Jonathan Emmett, design principal for Gensler Sports, architects of the upcoming Banc of California Stadium for LAFC, echoes the “intense, yet intimate” words.

“The first generation of U.S. venues lacked these qualities, which tend to be trademarks of traditional British and European venues,” he says. “Steep rakes of seating, tight field and sideline dimensions, roof canopies are signature elements of the LAFC stadium and these attributes will become the benchmark within MLS.”

In Orlando, for example, the crowd presses to just 15 feet from the pitch. Paired with a tight bowl design, soccer venues have moved communal areas to the corner terraces, allowing for the bowls to focus on one thing alone: the pitch. In L.A., the 34-degree rake in the seating bowl will become the steepest in the MLS — expect that number to get matched across the 2018 venues — and only 12 feet will separate the field from the closest seat in the house.

As seating bowls grow tighter, steeper and closer, the next classic soccer design that will take over MLS stadiums comes in the form of safe standing, something we saw for the first time when Orlando City Stadium offered us 3,800 safe-standing seats.

“Those supporters’ sections really drive the energy of the building,” Miller says. “In the NFL and NBA, it is the sound systems and scoreboards, but in soccer it is really the crowd that drives the energy with chanting and singing. Those standing areas have become really popular.”

Orlando introduces us to safe standing in North America (not counting Avaya Stadium’s small at-grade standing section mixed in with its north-end bar), but Minnesota won’t be far behind, with 2,800 safe-standing seats and a steeper rake than Orlando.

To keep them safe, the depth of each row remains similar to if it had a seat. A rail — with a cup holder — separates each row to eliminate the possibility of crushing people or the domino effect. “It is a very steep section so fans are right on top of the action,” says Miller, who watched the 30 for 30 documentary on the Hillsborough disaster a dozen times.

These sections include drummer platforms, pulley systems to launch tifo displays and even areas to let off smoke.

Emmett says that now that safe standing has begun to see a resurgence in Europe, harkening to standing terraces of venues such as the Kop at Liverpool’s Anfield Road, “supporter groups around MLS are following suit and demanding standing terraces in their venues to enhance their gameday experience and home-field advantage.”

In a way, MLS stadium designers have had the luxury of pulling the best of what has worked in Europe and turning that into a starting point for American design, all while blending in the premium seating designs birthed in the U.S. And while the tight bowls and canopies certainly offer that example of European concepts moving to North America, so does the idea of building almost exclusively in urban areas.

But building urban is sometimes easier said than done. Early soccer-specific designs lacked expensive amenities, but they also were built on relatively inexpensive plots of land, leaving some teams now hoping for a new location. Not unlike the 1960s and 1970s, when MLB and NFL venues first started to get sport-specific, economics dictated a move away from population when MLS arrived at its first soccer-specific stadium in 1999 (Crew Stadium in Columbus). Now, teams want back in. Columbus is exploring a more central location. Philadelphia strayed far from its downtown area. Also Chicago. Dallas. Colorado. They all face the same issue of choosing soccer-specific at the expense of location.

Miller says that bettering the vibe of any stadium often results from knitting it into the fabric of the city, not unlike older European stadiums. “They have grown up with the city and integrated into the life of the city,” he says.

Whether Orlando, the next three MLS venues in 2018 or soccer-specific designs coming soon, the latest wave of stadiums will grow bigger, more intense, more urban and more European.

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http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/mls-stadium-future-30-years-moving-pitches-public-parks-virtual-reality

Moving pitches and public parks: How future MLS stadiums could blur lines between teams, cities

MLS-leading stadium architects Populous designed a stadium of the future exclusively for FourFourTwo
 
by Tim Newcomb
Published
17 March 2017

Get really cozy with your favorite downtown environment when you start thinking about the MLS stadium of the future, a structure that could blur the line between soccer home and public park.

The world’s largest sports architecture firm, Kansas City-based Populous, and its leading soccer design principal, Bruce Miller, set to work on designing a view into the future, an exclusive look for FourFourTwo at what to expect from MLS stadia in 20 to 30 years.

“Really it is like a concept car,” Miller says. “It is to stir thinking and have some fun with where we think things are going and technologies that we think are really interesting. We let our imaginations go crazy with what the possibilities could be.”

First and foremost, Miller says that future soccer stadiums will firmly root themselves inside the urban core, so that the “edges between what is stadium and what is city become blurred and there is a space that might be a stadium one day and the best public park you could imagine the next, and the day after that there is a music festival.”

With that thought in mind, we’ve dubbed the Populous creation “Urban Park,” easily transferable to nearly any downtown environment, more so than, say, a baseball field, because of its rectangular geometry. And it fits better than an NFL building due to scale.

While MLS continues to gain traction in North America, Miller sees a trend toward larger buildings and expects in 20 years to hit the sweet spot of stadiums scaling to as many as 40,000 fans.

But to blur the lines between stadium and city, Populous has done two key things with Urban Park. First, you’ll see mixed-use towers at the corners. These areas can serve specific city needs — retail and dining, for example —during the day, facing the city streets, and then turn toward the pitch for game day as hospitality areas, a meshing of uses that allows a more intimate seating bowl.

Second, and most striking, Miller says to expect the technology of blended artificial and natural grass to make it so the pitch itself can be in use for far more than just soccer.

“That is maybe controversial because the soccer players want their grass to be sacred, but that is one of the things we took as supposition, is the quality and durability of the pitch makes it able to be used on non-game days,” Miller said.

And from there, Populous had fun with it beyond kids running amok on the grass during a family picnic, designing a completely movable pitch. Miller says the futuristic design includes a pitch that can rise up on non gamedays to reduce the vastness of the stadium for a park-like setting and reveal space underneath for parking, for example. Also, they designed in a stage that can rise out of the “pop the top” pitch, creating a theater or concert venue.

“It will become a community asset with large open space in the middle of the city, and that open space becomes a magnet for people in the city,” Miller says.

Expect a futuristic stadium to also boast the latest technology when it comes to sustainability, which is why Urban Park uses a translucent-fabric retractable roof loaded with photovoltaic panels to create a net-zero energy structure and one that even adds energy back to the grid. And to match the park environment, Miller’s team added in zip lining for those off days and a stadium edge that softens into the city with community gardens.

Technology within the seating bowl will change the viewer experience too, with fans gaining live stats about a player as they move across the pitch, enhancing the experience in a communal-style engagement.

And while Urban Park puts a focus on technology, why not go all in on augmented and virtual reality and create a stadium capable of using holographic technology and projection systems to allow fans to watch an away game virtually in the home Urban Park?

The technology could also allow fans to relive past games, whether historic worldwide contests or the home team’s big games from yesteryear. And when used as a concert, turn the projection system around to play video on the stands and intensify the experience for those on the field.

With an intimate seating bowl designed for the intensity of a 90-minute game, the future of stadiums will further brand a team as part of the city, creating an Urban Park that blurs the line between city and stadium.

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http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/mls-teams-who-need-new-stadiums-homes-venues

5 MLS teams that should be desperate for new homes

We've walked through the best. Now ... the rest?
 
by Tim Newcomb
Published
17 March 2017

For professional sports teams, home isn’t where the heart is. No, home is where fans flock to sing, cheer and spend money.

That trio of experiences is lacking with these five MLS teams, all of which need new places to call home (D.C. United escaped this list with its impending move). While this list could easily include more than the five selected, this is about who needs to get out of their current stadium, not necessarily who will. It’s about those who truly need a home that fills with fans. And heart.

New England Revolution

Current home: Gillette Stadium (above)

You could walk into the home of the New England Revolution without even knowing it. Gillette Stadium is all things New England Patriots. From the field to the signage to, well, the design. Gillette Stadium epitomizes an NFL venue not tuned for MLS soccer.

The Revs have played in either Foxboro or Gillette since 1996 (Gillette replaced its predecessor in 2002), and the discussion around finding a downtown Boston venue remains lackluster. New England sits stuck in its quandary waiting for owner Bob Kraft to find himself a site that rewards the 20,000 fans — Gillette generally caps around that size for home contests — that faithfully still support soccer in a venue far from soccer-friendly.

FC Dallas

Current home: Toyota Stadium

Even as FC Dallas attempts to reinforce all things Frisco, Texas, it shouldn’t. The 20,500-seat Toyota Stadium opened in 2005 and was an early example of soccer-specific design in Major League Soccer, but it’s well outside of town and lacks a canopy or shiny amenities.

While currently undergoing a $39-million renovation for the National Soccer Hall of Fame likely solidifies the City of Frisco-owned site as the Hoops’ home, having a venue 30 miles north of Dallas (and even farther from Fort Worth) without transit has led to an average of 14,000 home fans, the lowest in MLS. With the on-field success of FC Dallas, a more conducive home facility, mostly in terms of location, would do the team wonders.

Chicago Fire

Current home: Toyota Park

Sometimes, 12 miles might as well be 30. That’s the case in Chicago, where 71st Street and Harlem Avenue in Bridgeview, Illinois, has turned what otherwise looks like a decent MLS venue into the second-worst attended in MLS.

An average of 15,600 fans attend games in the 20,000-seat park, and one single express bus from the Midway Orange Line Station doesn’t make this an easy place to get to. Each year, the taxpayer-funded field loses money as Chicago fans have grown accustomed to getting to stadiums like Wrigley Field and Soldier Field via the L train. Opened in 2006, Toyota’s naming rights expired, and the company began removing branding — the venue still remains Toyota Park, for now — as fan frustration grows for a much-maligned site.

New York City FC

Current home: Yankee Stadium

It isn’t so much that New York City FC has trouble drawing fans to its “temporary” home in the Bronx, averaging over 27,000 fans a game, the third highest in MLS. It is more that the so-called temporary venue was designed, obviously, for baseball only. And baseball sight lines, field conditions and fan amenities don’t line up with soccer. Not even a little.

Since starting play in Yankee Stadium in 2015, NYCFC has made little, if any, progress on finding a permanent home anywhere in the five boroughs. Attempts at home sites prior to the first season fell through at alarming rates, and with the difficulty in building a venue in New York City, NYCFC needs to figure out a solution so that Yankee Stadium and its baseball-centric design doesn’t become a temporarily paralyzing fan experience.

Columbus Crew SC

Current home: Mapfre Stadium

Any mention of the Crew’s home field comes with the acknowledgment and appreciation that what is now called MAPFRE Stadium was the first soccer-specific stadium in MLS. But that was 1999 and now, nearly 20 years later, the $28.5 million venue north of downtown shows both its age and lack of amenities.

Anthony Precourt, owner of the Crew since 2013, has made no secret that he wants a more fan-friendly environment, and he wants it downtown. With a venue drawing in the bottom five of MLS at about 17,000 fans per home match, the Crew can once again set a trend and become the first MLS team to build two soccer-specific venues. The franchise may need that vision moving forward to keep our appreciation of MAPFRE from turning into bitterness.

(Follow link for full article.)

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/04/02/footy-mcfooty-face-was-a-prank-pushed-by-los-angeles-fc-fans/

‘Footy McFooty Face’ Was a Prank Pushed by Los Angeles FC Fans

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http://www.isportstimes.com/articles/26799/20170402/april-fools-ex-nfl-star-randy-moss-signs-with-united-soccer-league-team-as-goalie.htm

Ex-NFL Star Randy Moss Signs With United Soccer League Team as Goalie?  

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http://www.sportal.co.in/football/major-league-soccer-not-team-owners-sets-players-pay-crains-new-york-business/

Major League Soccer, not team owners, sets players' pay – Crain's New York Business

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http://futebolcidade.com/pachuca-vs-dallas-preview/

Pachuca vs Dallas – CONCACAF Champions League Preview

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http://sports.yahoo.com/news/atlanta-uniteds-ambition-to-become-the-biggest-club-in-america-092515703.html

Atlanta United's ambition: to become 'the biggest club in America'