By Ridge Mahoney, Senior Editor
Soccer America
BARCA BRAND. News that Barcelona president Joan Laporta was in Frisco, Texas, last weekend for MLS Cup generated predictable but incorrect speculation the legendary Catalan club is primed to place a team in MLS.
Laporta didnÆt rule out the possibility, and even ran down a list of possible cities, but his meetings with MLS officials were in regards to Barcelona playing in next summerÆs All-Star Game û to be staged at Pizza Hut Park, not coincidentally û and marketing agreements. Barcelona is also researching sites to establish training academies.
This is a more formal stance than that taken by Ajax, which triggered similarly misguided buzz earlier this year by discussing a branding deal with MLS and the San Jose Earthquakes. Ajax Orlando is up and running and has nothing to do with MLS.
The talks were held in May and by the end of the summer speculation ran rampant that a sale of the Quakes to Ajax was possible. Ajax officials quelled that scuttlebutt, much to the chagrin of Quakes fans and founders of Soccer Silicon Valley, the fan-based organization formed to keep the team in the South Bay.
As it turns out, according to a source, the same sort of arrangement is what Club America officials may have had in mind all along during its flirtations with MLS about moving the Quakes to Houston.
As of last year, all Club America was willing to do was to lend its name and logo and colors to an MLS team without investing in operation of the team itself. That hasnÆt changed. Former team president Javier Perez Teuffer spent a lot of time in Houston to find investors and/or form a consortium, not finalize an outright purchase.
Emilio Azcarraga, chief executive of parent company Grupo Televisa, wishes to establish the same presence in the United States for his team that Guadalajara owner Jorge Vergara has done sans an MLS team. Commissioner Don Garber testily told journalists Saturday, following an MLS Board of Governors meeting, that Club America is out of the MLS picture. But Houston isnÆt.
WHY MOVE? Houston consistently draws the highest local TV ratings of any non-MLS city for league game telecasts. It is the nationÆs fourth largest city (population: 2.1 million) and 10th-largest market area in the country. It has drawn good crowds for Mexican national team, Gold Cup and Interliga matches, which have been conclusively proved to have very little to do with how a market might support an MLS team. But unlike San Jose, there is some political support in Houston.
During MLS meetings last week, Harris County Sports Authority executive Oliver Luck met with league officials to continue discussions that began two years ago when the Club America interest first surfaced. The principals have yet to decide on where a team might play in Houston; two high school locations (Galena Park and Cy-Fair) and a pair of college stadiums (Robertson Stadium at the University of Houston, and Rice Stadium) are among the possibilities.
High school district officials have visited Pizza Hut Park and told league executives they are interested in constructing a similar complex as a long-term solution.
AEG officials have visited the Cy-Fair complex in northwest Houston. It is scheduled to open in March with an artificial-turf main field and capacity of about 14,000. A similar venue, Dragon Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was used by the Burn in 2003, and burn is just what playersÆ feet did on the surface.
Despite the uncertainty, AEG president Tim Leiweke has stated he is certain anything in Houston is better than playing at Spartan Stadium in San Jose and losing several million dollars a year. Still, he is talking this week with Greg Jamison, president and CEO of the NHL Sharks, about keeping the Quakes in San Jose. But that wonÆt happen without some sort of plan to construct a suitable facility somewhere in the South Bay.