With today’s announcement by MLS that the much anticipated second franchise would come to the Big Apple becoming North Americas 20th soccer franchise, the Manchester City owner Abu Dhabi royal family member Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, will in partnership with Major League Baseball powerhouse the New York Yankees become the latest owner of a sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
The price paid by the Manchester City owners is reported to be only $100 million which is chump change when you think that some soccer players now have that kind of value placed on them, never mind a whole team.
The Yankees organisation is particularly well placed to market the new franchise, and with it being assumed that the first season of the new team will be played at Yankees Stadium, it allows plenty of time for a new purpose built venue to be erected in flushing that could perhaps be a part of a multi-use stadium for other sporting events.
Pay attention folks, the Manchester City money, and Sheik Mansour’s backing opens up a new playing field as far as soccer in the U.S.A is concerned, and with David Beckham, and Brazilian millionaire Flávio Augusto da Silva looking to buy the next MLS team the future looks brighter than it has been for many years.
If the MLS is serious on how it wants to move forward they need to let the free market decide how much they want to invest and pay their players, while at the same time moving away from the over the hill players that look upon the MLS as a nice pay check until they retire.
The future for U.S.A soccer lies with Mexico and the countries of Central, and South America where soccer is the everyday sport, and I am sure that the new MLS clubs will be able to attract the best talent from these countries in the same way all the top European clubs are today made up of talented players from Africa.
