So maybe a word of explanation or two about why I started this blog.

So maybe a word of explanation or two about why I started this blog. 

I have been conducting a small letter writing campaign over the past year urging the Miami Beckham United group to consider teaming up with Bill Edwards and the Tampa Bay Rowdies, to use their "Beckham discount" to take the Tampa Bay Rowdies to MLS, if MBU's efforts to secure a soccer specific stadium (SSS) in the Miami area prove fruitless. 

MBU has been at it for over two years now; they are on their fourth site. The first two were premium sites on the Miami waterfront; local players nixed both sites. Then they tried the site next to the new Marlins Park, which Miami city officials had been pushing, but were unable to secure enough land. Fourth site is in an economically depressed area in Overtown with no parking, six blocks away from the nearest public transit; some land was acquired but talks with Miami-Dade County for additional land have broken down early this year.

MBU also needs a bigger investor to come on board and help pay for the SSS and other MLS expenses; they were in talks with PSG (Paris-St. Germain) ownership group earlier this year which ended without success. Two months ago there was a brief news article saying they were talking to a local railway investor, but no news since then. No news in this case is probably not good news for MBU; if they actually had a big new investor on board they would have announced it by now, I think. 

So, MBU needs a SSS, and a billionaire investor, otherwise they are dead in the water, MLS discount or no. MLS won't allow this situation to go on forever; this situation has been dragging on for two and a half years; the plan was to get Miami into MLS for the 2018 season and time is running out. 

Well, conveniently, there is a stadium on a harbor, in Florida, a downtown, urban waterfront stadium, about a four hour drive north-west from Miami: Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg. The Tampa Bay Rowdies play there. The Rowdies have a 41+ year history and have name recognition worldwide amongst soccer fans of a certain age. Owner Bill Edwards is a local St. Pete real estate developer who is also active in the entertainment business and may actually already (or at least potentially) have some contacts through his entertainment business with David Beckham and Beckham's business partner Simon Fuller.  

There's also a certain little bird who has told me (and other Mobsters/Rowdies fans) that Bill Edwards is considering moving the Rowdies to USL next year, with an eye towards moving to MLS later. Now Bill Edwards doesn't need to move the Rowdies to USL in order to move them to MLS; Minnesota United is going straight from NASL to MLS next year, for example. But there are other reasons why USL might be preferable to Bill Edwards, which I can speculate on later, but I won't do that now as I am trying to keep this brief. I have no idea how true this rumor is or not; also I don't want to get into the whole USL vs. NASL war as the subject is tiresome and fruitless. I just want to see the Tampa Bay Rowdies back on top of USA pro soccer, which means MLS. No, I don't think NASL is ever going to get to that level. It is not realistic.

So anyway I started this blog partly to chronicle this little project of mine, and also to blog about soccer and other stuff and whathaveyou. I grew tired long ago of pointless "debates" with people on Big Soccer, Facebook, and elsewhere. I know there are some out there who are anti-MLS or have other issues with what I am proposing here; not really my purpose to start an argument with them here. 

I'm not even that concerned with whether this blog gets any traffic or readership or not; mostly this is just here to chronicle my own thoughts and highlight interesting news items. I don't particularly want to deal with debating people in the comment sections; this is just here for my own purposes to put down my thoughts into some kind of permanent form and then move on. Possibly this will change later. 

--"Ralph"