TS Kamali
Major League Soccer has awarded new franchises to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Portland, Oregon. These new cities will create the 17th and 18th clubs in the league and give the Pacific Northwest the ability to develop a three team classic along the I-5 corridor.
The Vancouver Whitecaps are scheduled to begin play in 2011 in a remodeled stadium, B.C. Place. The Whitecaps will keep their nicknames from the days of the North American Soccer League, and more recently from their time in the United Soccer Leagues First Division, which is considered a second tier professional domestic league.
“This is a great win for the province of British Columbia and the city of Vancouver,” Jeff Mallett, one of the team’s owners, said in a statement. “Major League Soccer is North America’s premier soccer league and offers exceptional skill and entertainment. We have a world-class stadium that will be packed with cheering, singing, and chanting Vancouver supporters.”
In addition to Mallett, the Whitecaps’ ownership group includes Greg Kerfoot, the owner of the Whitecaps USL team; Steve Luczo, the president, chief executive and chairman of Seagate Technology who is also a part-owner of the NBA Boston Celtics; and Steve Nash, the all-star point guard for the NBA's Phoenix Suns who is a Victoria, British Columbia native.
The Whitecaps will give MLS its second team in Canada after Toronto FC. MLS is one of the few soccer leagues in the world that include teams from two countries.
B.C. Place will undergo a nearly $300M renovation that will include new seating, new artificial turf playing surface, and the first retractable roof among MLS teams. The renovated arena will seat 20,000.
Portland's club will keep the same name as the city's United Soccer Leagues franchise. The MLS team will be owned by a group led by Merritt Paulson, the 35-year-old son of former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
"Portland has the most passionate soccer fans in the country, as we can see today,'' Paulson told a chanting, cheering crowd of supporters decked out in the Timbers' bright green.
What sealed it for Portland was that Paulson and the city government came up with a plan to renovate the Timbers current home, PGE Park, and also build a new minor league baseball stadium for the Beavers, which he also owns. Paulson committed the $40M expansion fee and $12M of his own for the stadiums, accepting around $70M in city bonds to cover the rest of the tab.
The addition of Seattle, Vancouver and lastly Portland, showed MLS needed to embrace teams with USL roots and built-in fan bases.
MLS chose cities that have passionate supporters that will care about the teams. It also doesn't hurt that there are now three clubs in close proximity of each other, allowing away fans to travel to the matches, and famous rivalries to develop.
The continued growth of the league can only be good for MLS, and soccer in North America as a whole.
