‘Wish we could do a little bit more.’ Republic grapples with MLS on and off the pitch

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http://www.sacbee.com/sports/mls/article212596239.html

‘Wish we could do a little bit more.’ Republic grapples with MLS on and off the pitch

Sacramento lost its expansion bid to join Major League Soccer last week, but the nation’s top professional soccer league will still be headed to the state capital Wednesday.

Seattle Sounders FC, coming off of back-to-back MLS Cup appearances, will play Republic FC of the United Soccer League for a spot in the round of 16 in the 2018 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

The fourth-round match comes after Sacramento missed out on an expansion franchise for the second time in about six months. The MLS awarded Cincinnati its 26th franchise on May 29 after tabbing Nashville on Dec. 20.

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https://www.wpxi.com/sports/moving-up-cincinnati-latest-team-added-in-mls-expansion/759042991

Moving up: Cincinnati latest team added in MLS expansion

CINCINNATI (AP) - No longer just a pro baseball or football city. Not just a hotbed for college hoops. Thousands of soccer fans held a pep rally to celebrate Cincinnati's surprising ascendance on the pitch.

It's now a soccer city, too.

Major League Soccer added Cincinnati in its latest round of expansion Tuesday, rewarding a city that set attendance records during three seasons of United Soccer League play and has a stadium deal in place.

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https://sports.yahoo.com/domestic-league-sending-players-world-cup-005336094.html

Which domestic league is sending the most players to the World Cup?

How many going from Mexico?

Marquez is one of 22 players from Mexico’s Liga MX. Major League Soccer, which features 20 teams in the United States and three in Canada, is sending 19 players. Both North American leagues have fewer World Cup-bound players than they did four years ago. In 2014, 26 Liga MX reps and 21 from MLS went to Brazil.

All 19 MLS players going to Russia play for national teams other than the U.S. and Canada, both of which failed to qualify. Only the top leagues in England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy are sending more players who don’t play for the national squads of those countries.

England’s second-tier Championship contributes 24 players, the most of any lower division.

The French, Mexican and Spanish second divisions sent one player each, as did the English and Spanish third tiers and the top leagues in Honduras, Guinea, Finland, Iceland, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and South Africa.

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https://www.brotherlygame.com/2018/6/5/17428504/temple-university-graduate-has-spearheaded-independent-coverage-of-the-us-open-cup

For 15 years, Temple University graduate has spearheaded independent coverage of the U.S. Open Cup

Josh Hakala helped launch the site now known as TheCup.us shortly before moving to Philadelphia to attend Temple University

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https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/5/17428184/2018-world-cup-us-soccer-inside-story-jurgen-klinsmann-sunil-gulati-bruce-arena

Own Goal: The Inside Story of How the USMNT Missed the 2018 World Cup

In October, the United States failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in more than 30 years. A loss to Trinidad and Tobago sealed their fate, but according to players, coaches, commentators, and executives across American soccer, the disaster doesn’t come down to just one unfortunate result. No, it was the culmination of nearly a decade of mismanagement that broke the team’s spirit and condemned them to failure.

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https://www.curbed.com/2018/6/5/17428974/tampa-real-estate-development-water-street

Tampa’s multibillion-dollar downtown development boom starts on the waterfront

Ground-up new neighborhood offers city a chance to “reinvent itself—and even rebrand itself”

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn remembers how underutilized, underappreciated, and unattractive the city’s waterfront was when he first arrived in 1987.

The blocks of offices and surface parking lots located downtown, near the confluence of the Hillsborough River and the bay, provided few reasons to come downtown beyond work.

“The city had turned its back on the water,” Buckhorn says. “At the time, the waterfront was filled with broken-down wharfs and was more industrial than pedestrian. There was no Riverwalk, and Harbour Island, a neighborhood now home to 10,000 people, was a phosphate-dumping pit filled with weeds and rats.”

Today, Tampa’s waterfront is a magnet for investment: The city’s downtown has become the locus of a wave of construction projects that will bring an estimated $13 billion on investment to the Tampa region through 2022, according to Dodge Data & Analytics.

Its centerpiece, the new Water Street Tampa, is a $3 billion, 16-block mega-development, which recently broke ground on a new JW Marriott hotel and the $164.7 million University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute, a new facility that backers hope will become the centerpiece of an emerging medical-tech cluster.

A project of Strategic Property Partners (which is a joint venture of Cascade Investment, owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Jeffrey N. Vinik, the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey franchise), Water Street is the largest and highest profile of a series of developments reshaping the city.

“This is bigger than just a bunch of buildings going up during a boom time,” says architect Robert M. MacLeod, professor at the University of South Florida School of Architecture & Community Design. “It’s a chance for Tampa to reinvent itself—and even rebrand itself—as a downtown that’s very walkable and pedestrian friendly.”

A thousand little things reshaping the city

The changes sweeping Tampa’s waterfront and urban core may seem relatively sudden. But today’s transformative developments were the result of decades of slow, methodical effort, what Buckhorn calls “a moment 20 years in the making.”

The 53-acre Water Street site, a former industrial zone situated in the Garrison Channel and Hillsborough Bay, had traditionally been plagued by many of the same planning and connectivity issues that held back other urban districts in the U.S.

Cut off by a large highway, the neighborhood was a jumble of surface parking, nondescript offices, and disconnected big-ticket projects, including a convention center, an aquarium and the Tampa Bay Lightning’s arena. It exemplified the ways Tampa had traditionally lagged behind when it come to urban development, and lacked a true sense of place downtown. Salon once called the city a “hot urban mess.”

When billionaire Jeffrey Vinik realized he could acquire 53 acres of land near his team’s arena and have a hand not only in developing a collection of properties, but also methodically creating a new neighborhood, he seized the opportunity. According to James Nozar, CEO of Strategic Property Partners, the construction team has spent the last two year redesigning and rebuilding the street grid, instituting road diets to create walkable and bikeable streets and sidewalks and landscaping waterfront paths along with nearly 13 acres of new parks.

It’s all part of an ambitious plan to make Water Street the first WELL-Certified district in the world, meaning it will meet a new, evolving standard that prioritizes design for health and well-being, and elements like daylighting, outdoor access, and air quality. A new development-wide cooling system will save energy and allow rooftops to trade AC units for green roofs and gardens.

According to Nozar, the grid redesign and green focus shows just how Vinik and others are building Water Street with a long-term vision. Eventually, when the development is complete in 2027, Water Street will contain one million square feet of cultural and retail space, 3,500 residential units, hotels, and innovation hubs.

But that’s far from the only project recently opened or under construction near downtown. According to a recent New York Times article, New York-based Bromley Company will develop a 1.8-million-square-foot mixed-use project called Midtown Tampa. BTI Partners, out of Fort Lauderdale, is building the $400 million Westshore Marina District, transforming a 52-acre formerly industrial parcel on the waterfront.

Coming on the heels of new creative reuse projects such as Tampa Armature Works, a former trolley car garage-turned-upscale food hall in the Tampa Heights neighborhood, and Ulele, a riverfront restaurant, as well as public space investments like the Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, these development underscore how Tampa’s urban core is creating the amenities to accommodate thousands of new residents.

Nozar has compared all the activity in the once-overlooked urban core as filing in a hole in a doughnut. But it can also be seen as a zipper: The new downtown core, as well as the development heading north along the Hillsborough River, will ideally pull together the neighborhoods on the east and west of the waterway.

“Leadership needed to get behind the idea that you could transform this unproductive part of the city into a vibrant neighborhood,” says Diane Egner, publisher and editor of 83 Degrees, a local news site. “It’s more about 1,000 little things than one big thing. Vinik and Water Street is important, but it’s the little things that all add up into a huge investment into our downtown.”

By the time the first round of buildings at Water Street open in early 2021, coinciding with Tampa welcoming Super Bowl 55, Nozar, Vinik, and others believe Water Street will have completely redefined downtown.

Riverwalk and redevelopment

Each of these new projects capitalizes on the renewed focus on the city’s waterfront. Like many reviving downtowns focused on walkable urbanism and economic development, Tampa directed investment and energy into its riverfront, hoping to create a focal point for the city. Buckhorn, the latest in a line of mayors who have worked for decades to stitch together downtown Tampa, says the riverwalk had a “generational impact” on Tampa.

“If we were going to attract business capital, and the young people fleeing Tampa for other cities, we had to create a downtown that was exciting and focused on the waterfront,” Buckhorn says. “I spent the last seven years trying to build that, and the critical piece was the 2.4-mile Riverwalk. It was six mayors and 40 years in the making.”

The resurgent waterfront and downtown have come into their own just as Tampa was, in Buckhorn’s words, “changing its economic DNA.” Once more focused on the service economy and real estate, the Tampa region has rapidly developed a new urban economy, says Egner, and becoming increasingly attractive to young professionals and tech workers and creating a pent-up demand for housing downtown. According to the Tampa Downtown Partnership, downtown’s population had doubled to 8,100 people between 2008 and 2016.

Tampa has been a leading city for job growth in Florida over the last few years, and in the last few years, companies such as Amgen, Johnson and Johnson, and Bristol Meyers Squibb have relocated down here. Buckhorn sees the resurgent downtown attracting more such employers, and views the under-construction medical center as the locus of a growing medical tech hub that can become a “mecca for intellectual capital.”

“This medical tech cluster will drive the economy for decades to come,” he says. “That’s a lot bigger than getting a baseball team in Tampa.”

Growing pains and transit challenges

While the growth that has fueled Tampa’s current downtown development has helped reshape the landscape, it’s also in danger of exacerbating existing issues. The city needs to focus more on affordable housing, especially in the face of rising real estate prices, says Egner.

Transportation presents another big challenge for a downtown expected to add thousands of new residents and become an even bigger job center. The city’s public bus system isn’t nearly robust enough or well-funded enough to accommodate the expected population growth.

“We do not have the mobility options we need if we’re going to continue to grow at this pace,” says Buckhorn. “Florida is a very car-centric state, and we need to look at a more robust bus system, as well as rail and bus rapid transit.”

Tampa’s current wave of redevelopment offers potential for both redevelopment and reinvention. MacLeod sees promise and peril in how these forthcoming towers reshape not just the city’s plain skyline, but its public realm. Can these large developments be more than just signature architecture, and help shape the street? Can they bolster the emerging sense that downtown Tampa can have its own sense of place?

“I tell my current students that they’re lucky,” says MacLeod. “They will watch a city being designed and built before their eyes.’”

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fc-edmonton-soccer-canadian-premier-league-1.4693263

Edmonton expected to join new Canadian soccer league

Canadian Premier League hints at the news in social media video

Edmonton's professional soccer team FC Edmonton, shown playing the Ottawa Fury in 2016, was formerly part of the North American Soccer League. (Steve Kingsman/Freestyle Photography)

A video released on social media Tuesday by the Canadian Premier League has kicked up the interest of Edmonton soccer fans.

The video suggests that an Edmonton team will be joining Canada's new professional soccer league, set to begin play next year.

Though no specifics about the team have been released, the Canadian Premier League (CPL) is inviting soccer fans to join them for a "special unveiling" Friday evening, in front of the Old Strathcona Farmers Market.

"We're planting the seeds for the future of professional soccer in Canada," reads the invite from the CPL.

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http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/sports/professional/united/atl-utd-notes-goalkeeper-paul-wall-christensen-shows-consistency-with/article_3215468c-68ed-11e8-8f59-fb366de69450.html

ATL UTD 2 NOTES: Goalkeeper Paul "Wall" Christensen shows consistency with Atlanta United 2

Perhaps Atlanta United 2 has found a stable answer to its goalkeeping difficulties.

Coming off its first clean sheet in the road match against Tampa Bay Rowdies, goalie Paul Christensen reflected on what can be considered fairly a strange game.

Atlanta United 2 appeared to be doomed, down one man for the remainder of the first half and entire second half after left back Will Crain took his second yellow card and was sent off. Roughly three minutes later, the Rowdies’ Marcel Schafer was sent off with a straight red card after a kick to the back of the leg to Oliver Shannon was deemed violent conduct

Whatever the source, it’s a sight for sore eyes after a 4-0 defeat at North Carolina FC. Atlanta United 2's 25 goals conceded are tied for third most in the USL. Saturday's match was also the first time since 2016 the Rowdies had been shut out at home by a USL club.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-5808987/David-Beckham-backs-exciting-led-bid-2026-World-Cup-Moscow-vote-edges-closer.html

David Beckham backs 'very exciting' US-led bid for 2026 World Cup as Moscow vote edges closer

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https://en.as.com/en/2018/06/06/football/1528289833_912706.html

David Beckham: ''Mexico, USA and Canada deserve World Cup''

The owner of the new MLS side in Miami spoke passionately about the 2026 Fifa tournament and the growing football interest in that region of the world.

David Beckham speaks with authority about the beautiful game and says that if the joint bid to host the 2026 World Cup by Mexico, Canada and the United States of America would be "very special".

Beckham knows the passion

In an interview with AP, the former Manchester United, Real Madrid, PSG, AC Milan and LA Galaxy midfielder spoke highly of the three countries hoping to be granted Fifa's showpiece tournament.

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http://thecomeback.com/soccer/fc-cincinnati-fans-will-make-the-trip-to-columbus-crew-game-to-support-savethecrew.html

FC Cincinnati fans will make the trip to Columbus Crew game to support #SavetheCrew

Hopeful rival fanbases unite?

Imagine a scenario where Ohio State fans would make the trip up north to Ann Arbor, Michigan to show support for the Wolverines. Or Bears and Packers fans uniting for a common purpose. Red Sox and Yankees fans standing side by side cheering the same team in the same stadium? It would take a once-in-a-lifetime circumstance to see those fanbases who are intense rivals lay aside their differences and come together.

But that’s exactly what we’ll see on Saturday June 9th when FC Cincinnati fans will make the 100 mile drive up I-71 to Mapfre Stadium to show their support for the #SavetheCrew movement and keeping the Columbus Crew in Columbus.

FCC fans have a lot to celebrate with officially being named as a new MLS franchise after being a great success playing in the USL. In case you’re wondering what the #KeepHellReal hashtag means, it pays homage to the “Hell is Real” name given to the Cincinnati-Columbus rivalry. Hell is Real owes its name to the apocalyptic apocalyptic sign along I-71 that connects the two cities and vaults it into the top five derby names in world soccer.

This is a remarkable gesture from FC Cincinnati fans to show solidarity to MLS among Ohio soccer fans. The Buckeye state is not going to settle for having one team ripped away in Columbus to be “replaced” by FC Cincinnati. If Don Garber thinks that Crew fans will suddenly become FC Cincinnati fans overnight, he is badly, badly mistaken. Of course, Garber and all of MLS has been badly mistaken throughout the entire Crew relocation debacle. Sadly, that hasn’t stopped MLS from empowering monorail salesman Anthony Precourt from bumbling his way forward through this monumental, self-inflicted PR disaster.

While outside observers might see FCC as a death knell for the Columbus Crew, it actually should be the opposite. A Crew-FCC rivalry would immediately become one of the best in MLS alongside Portland-Seattle and lift both fanbases. As such a relatively young league with so much rapid expansion, it’s hard for MLS to actually create organic rivalries that mean something. Oftentimes, MLS’s attempt to manufacture rivalries out of nothing can feel contrived. There isn’t a pre-existing Columbus-Cincinnati rivalry in professional sports, but it would certainly come naturally. (Just ask Cincinnati sports fans their thoughts on Ohio State and you’ll see why.)

What makes this support from FC Cincinnati all the more meaningful is that it’s the only home game the Crew will have on national television this year. That is astounding considering the #SavetheCrew story is the biggest story in MLS this year and the team made the conference final last year. It’s almost like MLS wants to suppress fans in Columbus! This show of support from FCC fans for what could be their biggest rival should be one of the biggest feel-good stories in sports right now. At least for anyone outside of Precourt Sports Ventures or the MLS offices.

MLS and Anthony Precourt have done everything they can to demoralize Crew fans in attempting to rip one of the league’s own founding franchises out of its city. Precourt is letting Mapfre Stadium fall apart while spending $2 million trying to astroturf in Austin. Don Garber continues to offer little more than empty words while his league funds lobbyists in Austin and MLS/PSV lawyers bash Columbus in legal briefs.

At a time when Crew fans must feel like it’s Columbus Against the World, it’s reassuring to know that even their biggest rival fanbase is willing to stand alongside them in the fight to Save the Crew.

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http://www.columbusalive.com/entertainment/20180606/last-season-where-and-when-will-other-boot-drop

The Last Season?: Where and when will the other boot drop?

Feelings of inevitability starting to build in special season

The game highlights, in other words, were many, and given the way the week started, they were also majorly needed by the Crew faithful.

In the last week, You Know Who released his latest stadium renderings for his proposed venue in You Know Where.

Officials in You Know Where likewise released a study of the site that said it’d be suitable for a soccer stadium.

And MLS also granted an expansion team to FC Cincinnati. (Commissioner Don Garber was non-committal about what that addition meant for Crew SC.)

Another boot, it would appear, is about to drop. And if I were a betting man, I’d wager it’ll fall, when it does eventually fall, on You Know Who.

Do I have anything other than an educated guess to support this? Not at all.

But I can smell You Know Who’s fear. And like any good wolf pack, our comrades in Save the Crew are circling.

Can you sense it, too?

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http://www.ecns.cn/hd/2018-06-07/detail-ifyuyvzv3224898.shtml

Beckham tries ancient football in China (1/2)

Former professional football star David Beckham plays cuju, known as the origin of modern football, at the Bengbu Ancient Buildings Expo Park ahead of the 2018 G-EXPO Global Top Summit in Bengbu City, East China’s Anhui Province, June 6, 2018. (Photo: China News Service/Zhong Xin)

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http://www.ecns.cn/hd/2018-06-07/detail-ifyuyvzv3224898.shtml#

Beckham tries ancient football in China (2/2)

Former professional football star David Beckham plays cuju, known as the origin of modern football, at the Bengbu Ancient Buildings Expo Park ahead of the 2018 G-EXPO Global Top Summit in Bengbu City, East China’s Anhui Province, June 6, 2018. (Photo: China News Service/Zhong Xin)

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http://www.santafenewmexican.com/sports/pro-soccer-lands-in-new-mexico/article_8cc1950c-43d9-5be5-9840-c76da418ef46.html

Pro soccer lands in New Mexico

Peter Trevisani can see it now.

Under the glow of stadium lights, a black and white ball falls to the ground, a whistle blows, and a pack of muscular legs and fast-paced feet rush across a grassy field.

A breeze pulses through the bleachers, where crowds with face paint and handmade posters cheer. Young and old, wealthy and poor, women and men, families and couples, soccer enthusiasts and sport illiterates — a group of strangers are joined together as friends to share a passion, even if it’s just for a couple of hours.

This is the dream of New Mexico’s United Soccer League team — and Trevisani, the leader of its ownership group and a Santa Fe resident.

Chief Operating Officer Justin Papadakis awarded the newest USL franchise to New Mexico on Wednesday night, giving the state a pro soccer team that will begin its inaugural season in March 2019.

During the announcement at Albuquerque’s Fusion Theatre, Trevisani — who also is the team’s president — joked that the news is “New Mexico’s worst-kept secret,” since he said so many people knew about it already.

Founded in 2011, the United Soccer League is just one step below the Major Soccer League and currently has 33 teams, spanning from Las Vegas, Nev., to New York. Until 2017, the league was considered third-tier, but in the U.S. Soccer Federation named the league Division II.

Although the Albuquerque franchise doesn’t yet have a coach or even a nickname, Trevisani introduced the team’s first player, bringing Devon Sandoval — a former Albuquerque Eldorado and University of New Mexico star — to the stage.

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https://twitter.com/TampaBayRowdies/status/1004371171750469632

Tampa Bay Rowdies

‏Verified account @TampaBayRowdies

Check out what our amazing medical staff provided by @BayCare's St. Anthony's Hospital brings to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. We're happy to have them as our official medical providers.

St. Anthony's Hospital - The Rowdies Official Medical Provider

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7:35 AM - 6 Jun 2018

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https://twitter.com/WFLADan/status/1004404811658391552

Dan Lucas

‏Verified account @WFLADan

Great chat today with @TampaBayRowdies Joe Cole, a 3-time World Cup player for England. He previews #WorldCup2018 with us this week on @WFLA Super Sports Sunday!

9:49 AM - 6 Jun 2018

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https://twitter.com/TampaBayRowdies/status/1004419439649943553

Tampa Bay Rowdies

‏Verified account @TampaBayRowdies

We caught up with Rowdies head coach @neillycollins3 after training. Hear what he had to say about the club's recent performances since he took over.

Neill Collins on the team's recent performance

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10:47 AM - 6 Jun 2018

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https://twitter.com/TampaBayRowdies/status/1004448624615534592

Tampa Bay Rowdies

‏Verified account @TampaBayRowdies

This afternoon, Neill Collins and his coaching staff hosted a training session with some of the best young local talent in the area, including several players from @tbusoccer.

12:43 PM - 6 Jun 2018