By AVI CREDITOR
The question isn't "If?" for Montreal Impact president Joey Saputo. It's "When?"
The Vancouver Sun reported Monday that Saputo plans on having his team join Major League Soccer as soon as 2011, with realistic hopes set at 2012.
Saputo has met with MLS league officials, including commissioner Don Garber, in each of the last two months, and he's as optimistic as ever that the Impact will make the leap from USSF Division 2 to MLS within two years.
"We are closer now than ever before in making an announcement," Saputo told the Sun. "MLS was satisfied with the meetings and received the assurances it needed. Our bid has now proceeded to the next level."
With Vancouver and Portland set to join the league in 2011, Montreal will likely have to wait another year before making the leap. But Saputo appears to be more eager, and in the event of a snag with either the Whitecaps or Timbers, the Impact president has "advised the MLS that if need be we can ready for 2011."
————-
Would you like to see Montreal join MLS? What would a potential third Canadian team do for the league? Do you like that MLS continues to expand, or does it dilute the talent pool too much?
Share your thoughts below.
ives didnt write this
first of all you started by calling me a moron for blasting two cities i did not blast, in fact i complemented one of them.
secondly you have no idea what you are talking about. attendance is the number one factor in favour of montreal. the owner is kind of a douchebag and has rubbed MLS the wrong way on a number of occasions and they would still bend over backwards to get his team i the MLS.
thirdly, some cold hard facts:
USL attendance for 2008 (the last season that included ATL):
Montreal 12695 / 13034 97% capacity
Portland 8568 / 19566 44%
Seattle 3386* / 3700 92%
Atlanta 2281 / 4500 51%
Miami 1701 / 7000 24%
*Seattle averaged 10,000 for USL games played at Quest Field
Atlanta and Miami and other South Eastern cities will NOT get an expansion team in the MLS. Not now. Not in the next 5 years. Not in the next 10 years. MLS wills top at 20 and no city in the south east has any proven track record of fan support for soccer (or in the case of atlanta and miami much of any other sports, both cities are notorious for pathetic attendance for their professional sports teams even when they are playoff calibre).
If you live in a city in the South East or anywhere else and you want an MLS team you have only one choice … get an USL team, average 7K-10K fans for a couple of years and then the MLS will pay attention to you. otherwise quit whinging, pick a distant MLS franchise, buy a jersey and watch on TV or move to a city that doesn’t suck in a part of the country that isn’t chock-a-block with uncultured ignorami.
Douche is a word in both French and English too – doesn’t make it a suitable name for a professional soccer franchise. And that emeblem is straight amateur clip art – although, it still might top the KC Wizard’s logo….
Explain how this would be the case (unless you are just being sarcastic).
The price is the price. Saputo’s problem was caused the collapse of the Canadian dollar. WIth the US dollar’s fall, he will be able to meet the price.
That’s not very realistic. How man cities could field a team on par with Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal? What concerns me about having 2 MLS teams in Canada is were they will find professional caliber Canadians. Perhaps MLS will have to change the rules limiting the number of Americans they can have.
Montreal seems like it would be a great market and there are plenty of players abroad who could be brought back to play in MLS so why not add Montreal?
He is like Jerry Jones of the nfl. is that a bad thing for mls.
Impact is both a french and english word, sort of the reason they picked it…
Dsd — if it’s the stadium you’re fixed on, Sauto’s $40 million franchise fee, will help.
ya and each time a team gets relegated they will more than likely fold, because this is America not the rest of the world. Fans would more than likely leave because their team is no longer top flight and only the supporters would stay.
Sure for years the KC Royals and Pirates should have been sent down to Triple-A, but it’ll never happen.
I think with relegation brings bigger financial downfalls
Wow… first of all, chill out. I never said Montreal was a bad addition.
I think a team in Nashville or Atlanta or something like that could probably draw pretty well. I don’t think attendance is the issue. Montreal is getting a team because it has a good structure in place and doesn’t have to make a ton of investments to get up to MLS level. That could someday be the case for a team in the Southeast if someone like Blank can move forward with things like a stadium. For the record, I am positive that soccer fans in the Southeast would be willing to cross SEC battle lines to root for their own MLS team. There are a ton of soccer fans down there who just don’t follow MLS because they feel left out.
Awesome name idea… rather unoriginal but im a sucker for football time-tested culture…
Instead of adding teams how about promotion/relegation in this country. It would generate a bigger fan base and make every game important
i do have my facts straight you f**cktard. please point out where i ripped either Toronto or Seattle. i actually used Seattle as an example of what the MLS needs more of. learn to read, i was suggesting that cities like Montreal AND Seattle AND Toronto are GOOD places for expansion teams and places in the South East are NOT. did you skip the reading comprehension part of 3rd grade?
Ah yes, the return of the “Atlanta is a terrible sports town” meme… which isn’t true but it makes those people quoting it feel like they have a stronger argument.
Is Atlanta comparable to Boston or Philadelphia in their rabidness support of pro teams? No. However it certainly isn’t worse than some cities and the support for soccer is probably not comparable to other professional sports where long-time ties to previous hometowns aren’t going to disappear anytime soon.
Further, don’t lump central/south Florida communities in with the real southeast – that’s as ignorant as assuming a Bostonian has any loyalties to New York.
At this point, anyone who comes into the league and actually spends money on acquiring quality players (unlike Kraft, Kroenke, etc.) is more than welcome.
The more owners who aren’t cheapos, the better. I’m assuming Saputo has too much of an ego tied up in the Impact to just sit idly by and let his team rot the way Kraft has.
A sweetheart deal in DC? Do you have anything that could be constituted as a clue or do you just make things up as you go along? DCU has never had a deal. Do you mean overpaying for said dead stadium that isn’t in the middle of any city, but instead on the east side of the city? Where they can’t turn a profit because they pay so much in rent? Where the stadium they play in would be condemned under normal conditions as a falling rock hazard, if it were not a Federal Park area where the District retains all rights for land usage so long as a stadium is maintained on the site for a local sports team? A stadium in which they can be evicted at any time because Mayor Fenty wants the Redskins back in town, and Dan Snyder wants back in the District as soon as humanly possible? Or how about the fact they’ve been the political pawns of the area, just being strung along for political gain in the district?
DC hasn’t had any hiccups with the Nationals. They got that gem lock, stock and barrel without a fight. The only issue they ever faced was the fact the MLB still owned the team when the “ownership” went to get a construction bond for their share. 2 years to break ground on a site already hand-picked and delivered to them, 2 years to build. Still the worst team in the league, still outdrawn by DCU.
You obviously don’t know DC’s situation for any of their sports teams… and you obviously don’t know what that whole “expansion fee” is for…
Just for future reference Ives, when a story about the Impact comes up in the future, avoid using the Impact pun AT ALL COSTS!!!! After two or three uses it becomes unbearable.
The Impact are the USL 1’s champions for 2009, and Montreal is great soccer market with a passionate fan base. They would make a great addition to the MSL Eastern Conference with an intense rivalry with Toronto and traditional foes in Boston and New York.
if it had been Santos of Brazil, it would;ve been 110K. Lets hope Santos’s signing of Robinho will make NYRD vs Brazil Santos a hot item.
you’re right about Southeast, however the ratings for international soccer games/events are among the top 4 or 5…sometimes 3rd. Eventually, Miami will happen.
give it a french name…after all, the “mexicans'” teams has a spanish one (chivas)
MLS should do both, not one or the other. But Montreal is clearly the priority over the SE at this point due to their strong local support and great ownership. But in 2-3 years, sure get the SE in too if Blank can get a bid together.
he doesn’t think it…he knows it!
yep, but 49 percent of their games should be with US teams since that probably generates more excitement then playing each other for the 3rd or 4th time per season. We’d get slaughtered in those games since the Canadians in Van, Mon, and Tor would generate enough profits for much more major signings then MLS could ever be capable of (excluding galaxy or nyrb). Edmon, Que, Calgary could probably break even (w/two smaller market teams), creating a tight little league.
Actually, I believe it was more like 55,000. Even more impressive.
I think Garber took close notice of the Montreal club when he saw them draw over 55,000 fans for the CONCACEF Champions League game against Santos last February. The game was played at Olympic Stadium were the Expos once played but the high attendence for the match certainly indicated a potential for a strong following by another Canadian market.
There are a lot of weak names around MLS (RSL? Dynamo? Red Bulls?). Impact isn’t that great, Olympique Montreal is a lot cooler, but hey, they are a solid team with good support in a town on east coast. Yeah, you’d rather have a team in the SouthEast…if the SouthEast weren’t a crap area for many sports not named College Football & Nascar. Even Jacksonville struggles with the NFL, Atlanta is a TERRIBLE sports town and let us not forget that the first two MLS teams that went down there, BOTH FOLDED. (Miami, Tampa). So, sure, would be nice to have one (I’m down for a New Orleans road trip, personally), but it’s not going to happen. And, as for MLS getting DC a stadium first, SCREW THAT. DC can get their own stadium. They’ve had 15 years to work on it, and a sweatheart deal with a dead stadium in the MIDDLE of the city, hardly a death sentence that the other teams in the league have had to deal with (being way out in the suburbs with NE, being in a minor league ball park (CHI, Dallas for a few years, KC), etc.
DC had some hiccups with the Nationals, but they have had the luckiest deal of any MLS team. If they can’t figure out a way to get their own place, MLS isn’t responsible for doing it for them. It’s their business, they had no problems running it to 3 titles when the league was crap, they can run it now too.
that’ll be Davey Becks’ team. I’m think 2013.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Yeah, they need to be in MLS. They’ll draw the fans and have an instant rivalry with Toronto. They’ll probably be instantly competitive too; they’ve always put out a competitive USL side…
Just don’t call them Montreal Impact, terrible name….
So did the USL teams in Toronto and Seattle, moron. Get your facts straight before you start ripping other cities.
Now we just need to get a 20th team to keep things even. Don’t think we have another city/ownership group ready yet.
well when your friends live in cities with USL-1 teams that draw an average of 12,000 fans over a season then I am sure MLS will consider them for expansion … oh, wait yeah … the SE and FL teams in the USL average less than 3,000 … so yeah, get a clue … the SE won’t get a team until they prove they can support a team with assess in seats and until then I say that Montreal is a great addition to the MLS … any city that can do more of a Seattle thing than a San Jose thing is good for the MLS.
would rather have montreal than vancouver
You are right. He is pretentious and thinks he is MLS’s gift to soccer.
Yeah, I have a lot of friends in the Southeast who are dying for an MLS team. They ought to get one…
They seem to have great fans, this will only make the league stronger.
I personally don’t understand mentality behind focusing on another eastern Canada team while there is a large section of the US in the Southeast that is basically being ignored. USSF saw that area as valuable enough to include Nashville and Atlanta in the bid to host the World Cup, but MLS doesn’t. I don’t know what the problem with his bid was, but Arthur Blank would have stepped in and immediately been one of the wealthiest owners in the league. Not only that, but he’s been in discussions with the city for a long time now to build a stadium if he is ever awarded an MLS team. I just don’t see how the league can justify adding a third Canadian team while ignoring a well deserving section of the country. Let Cletus and Jack Mac play in front of their true hometown team!!!
Stadium is directly north of Olympic Stadium, expandable to 20,000. When they made the Champions League Round of 16, they moved their match inside the Big O — and sold 45,000 tickets.
They would be a worthy admission to MLS. Not sure about the “Impact” name. Maybe “Olympique Montreal”?
I think this guy runs a pretty good organization.
The Stadium is located in the city, they have a dedicated fan base. The team is always competetive, and a couple years ago realized that the $40mil fee garber was trying to charge was highway robbery.
All that I look forward to is having matches on saturdays instead of sundays so I can make the 6hr drive to CT a little easier.
I think the team had a tv contract for games on sunday, I hope it doesnt keep going after they get into MLS.
I know it wasn’t really any info about the guy like you asked, but really i put more stock in how he runs his team then his personality.
they’re not usl2, they’re ussf div 2. they’ve been usl1 until this year. they’ve got a great fanbase and performed well in recent concacaf champions league play.
i say let ’em in.
Nice touch by Cardozo (i think) to wear a shirt that said “Fuerza Cabanas” in front of the cameras. I hope he fully recovers. It is a blow to America fans, Paraguayans and the soccer world in general.
oh, andmy first impressino of this owner is that he sounds like trump. Seems like the kind that would rock the boat…. Can someone fill me in on him/them?
give the canadians their own league. They need the development.
never heard of them. Thats not a knock, I don’t really know usl. I guess it doesn’t matter if its a usl2 club because at least its better than starting from scratch?
Uh. Can we get some help with getting a stadium built for DCU before the league gets diluted even more? I’m not asking for money. I think United should build it themselves, we just need Garber and company to get the right people into some board rooms together… Hello Dan Snyder, and Ted Leonsis…?
i say yes! if we can deal with 19 teams..odd number