RUMOR: Barca to Partner With Disney for MLS Miami II

ORLANDO, FL, 3 December, 2008: A local bartender who recently worked a catered event at Disney World has informed MLS Rumors² that not only is MLS Miami II "90% certain of happening," the team's ownership will also include the Walt Disney Corporation. "I was talking to a drunk Disney exec, and he told me that Disney sees MLS Miami II as an excellent opportunity to expand the Disney global brand. Right now, the plan is to call the team the Barca USA Big Green. They'll wear claret and dark blue tops with green shorts at home, and green tops with gold shorts on the road. Also, they're going to play half of their games in Orlando, at a soccer-specific stadium Disney is going to build where Space Mountain is right now."

MLS Rumors² did a little digging around on the internet, and it turns out that this has been in the works for over a decade! Don't believe us? Well, check out this little nugget from the freakin' New York Times, suckas:

For the last two weeks, all 12 M.L.S. teams have been training together and playing scrimmages at the Walt Disney World Resort's Disney Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. In the marketing world, that's called synergy. How long can it be before Disney fields a team called the Big Green to complement its soccer movie that starred Rodney Dangerfield?

How ya like us now?

Our man on the scene in Orlando also informed us that Barca and Disney are planning to give away upwards of 10,000 tickets per match: "They're looking at this whole deal as a loss leader. It's all about establishing the Barca and Disney brands. In the current business environment, they think it's a real winner of a concept."

Barca: MLS Miami II Will Be Most Epic Fail Ev-ah!

MIAMI, 1 December 2008: MLS Rumors² recently received an email from a confidential source with ties to Barcelona's MLS expansion bid:

It's, like, gonna be insane. Barca are 100% committed to making this team the most epic fail in the history of epic failure that is professional sports in South Florida. You think you've seen fail before? You think the Marlins' ritual post-World Series fire sales are something? Well, at least they f'ing *won* the Series, even if no one went to their games. MLS Miami II will be the culmination of decades of South Florida fail. They're going to market heavily to the locals of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican descent, with an ad campaign that calls baseball a sport for [Ed.: rhymes with harrycons]. Then, they're going to spend over $3 million to bring in a washed-up Brazilian, like, say, Ronaldo, who will promptly spend every waking hour either in the clubs or on South Beach, getting fatter and slower by the day. It'll make Lothar's "Rehab on the Riviera" look like serious training.

I'm telling you, it's going to be Epic. Truly Epic.

Stay tuned, dear readers, this is a developing story.

Bonus Expansion Coverage: Vegas - the One that Got Away

"O deepest wound of all thy bid should die / On that darkest day. Oh, he could hide / The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry."

There's no sugar-coating it, folks. When the housing bubble burst, followed by the credit crisis, Las Vegas was hit hard. Leading to the premature death of the city's expansion bid. This, my friends, was a tragedy on an epic scale, for Vegas would have been the Ultimate Road Trip Destination. Don't believe us? Let's take a look at the numbers, shall we?

Dining: 5 Not only is the town chock full o' celebrity chefs, it's also got some fantastic cheap eats, including some top-notch Korean places that cater to the cold-blooded blackjack dealers who just wiped you out in 15 minutes down the road at the Bellagio.
Entertainment: 6 (out of a possible 5). This would be a 7, but after Manticore the Tiger put an end to the Sigfried and Roy experience, well...let's just move on before we get all misty-eyed...
Site-Seeing: 5 If for some bizarre reason you get tired of checking out downtown and the Strip, you can hop into a helicopter and check out the Grand Canyon. Srsly.
"Entertainment": 6 (out of a possible 5). If you don't know you better ask somebod-ay!
Drinking: 5. You drink for free on the casino floors. Allow us to repeat that: you drink for free on the casino floors. Oh sure, you pay for it in the end, but still...free!
Climate: 1. Yeah, so, it's in the desert...

Final Score: 28 out of 30. Weep, gentle reader, for what might have been.

Grading the Expansion Candidates VII: Montreal

Poutine: don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Alright folks, here it is, the final chapter in our Expansion Opus...Montreal! Home of Formula 1 racing, poutine, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

Dining: 5 From cheap eats (poutine) to world class (and pricey as hell) restaurants, Montreal's got it all. Seriously. The food is fantastic.
Entertainment: 5 They have a casino. Allow us to repeat that: they have a casino. It is open 24 hours a day.
Site-Seeing: 3 It's not really a great city for site-seeing...then again, there's so much in the way of eating, drinking, entertainment, and "entertainment" going on that you really wouldn't bother visiting a bunch of world-class museums, even if they did have them.
"Entertainment": 5 Home of the world famous "Canadian Ballet." Remember, the ladies who don't quite make the cut at Cirqe de Soleil still have to make a living...
Drinking: 4 Bonus point for drinking age of 18.
Climate: 4 It can get hot and humid in the summer, and when it does, there isn't much in the way of AC available...however, it's generally more pleasant than the usual suspects (I'm looking at you, Houston, DC, and Frisco, TX).

Final Score: 26 out of 30! Tied with Portland! Of course, since there are two slots available, we don't have to pick a winner...but this is America, and we like winners and hate ties, Doug Logan said so, so we've got to settle this somehow...oh yeah! This is America! So we'll give the win to the American city, Portland, because those silly Poutine-Eating Surrender Monkeys won't care whether they win or lose! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Grading the Expansion Candidates VI: Portland

Yeah, it's that cool.

Ah, the City of Roses! (Then again, Baltimore is "Charm City," so I wouldn't be surprised to discover that there aren't, in fact, any roses in Portland at all.) Home of one of the top supporters groups in that portion of North America that lies above the Rio Grande, the Timbers Army. Does Portland have what it takes to merit an MLS expansion side? Let's find out...

Dining: 4 A city that takes its food seriously. We thought about awarding a bonus point for Portland's alleged status as a mecca for vegetarians, but we love ourselves some meat, so we didn't.
Entertainment: 4 Bonus point for live music scene.
Site-Seeing: 4 Half a bonus point for a lively arts scene, and half a bonus point for outdoorsy-type shit, which some people might want to take in.
"Entertainment": 4 Bonus point because one of the hottest women this blogger went to college with spent a couple of years moonlighting as an "entertainer" in Portland...or maybe it was Seattle...whatever...[pauses to dial up "Centerfold" on iPod]
Drinking: 5 Mmmmmmm...beer. Beer in brewpubs. Beer in movie theaters. Yummy, yummy, malty, hoppy beer. Gallons and gallons of The Good Stuff. Certified top-notch brew. None of that Beer-Like Product they pawn off on the vulgar masses in St. Louis. Real f'ing beer. More breweries than Cologne, Germany. Mentioned by the late, great Michael Jackson (the sane one) as a candidate for Beer Capital of the World. If that's not worth 5 points, nothing is.
Climate: 4 Bonus point for relative lack of summer humidity (compared to, say, Miami, Houston, DC, or Atlanta).

Oh! Looks like Portland is tied with Vancouver with 25 points...

But wait! We're awarding one Big Rob Bonus Point for proximity to the Emerald Triangle! Which means...

Final Score: 26 out of 30! We have a new front-runner

Grading the Expansion Candidates V: Vancouver (UPDATED)

What was Steve Francis thinking? We may never know...

Alright, time for the second Canadian city on our list: Vancouver.

Remember when Stevie "Franchise" Francis was drafted by the then-Vancouver Grizzlies? Remember how he pouted for the rest of the televised draft, and then forced the Grizz to trade him to Houston?

I wonder what the hell he was thinking...and I'm sure that at some point during his first road trip to Vancouver as a member of the Rockets, he asked himself the same question: "What the hell was I thinking?"

With that aside out of the way, let's get to the numbers!
Dining: 4 A very good city for food. No denying it.
Entertainment: 3 Good but not great.
Site-Seeing: 4 Bonus point for all the cool outdoorsy stuff in the vicinity.
"Entertainment": 4 Hey, they've got an "entertainment district," right? Plus, with all those Japanese businessmen in town, you figure they've gotta have some decent, uh, establishments.
Drinking: 3 - bonus point for drinking age of 19, but point deducted for early closing time, assuming this article about bars closing at midnight outside the entertainment district is correct.
Climate: 4 Summer league and all that...

Final score: 22 25 out of 30. Not quite enough to take the top spot away from Miami...and Although with Portland and Montreal still to come, well, it looks like it won't will it be enough for Vancouver to make the MLS Rumors² cut? Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Taking Big Rob's comment into account, we are awarding Vancouver a 3 point "BC Bud Bonus." Why? Because that's how we roll, that's why. Of course, this just increases the "what was Steve Francis thinking?" factor.

Grading the Expansion Candidates IV: St. Louis

Ah, St. Louis...Home of the famous Gateway Arch, and the largest Belgian-owned brewery in the United States! Let's get down to it, shall we?

Dining: 3 We're being generous here, because we've actually had some good meals in St. Louis...but we had to look right hard to find them...and we've had some seriously terrible food there, too.
Entertainment: 3 Meh.
Site Seeing: 3 You've got the InBev brewery, and the Cahokia Mounds are nearby (those are really, really cool, actually...even if you do have to go through East St. Louis to get to them), but there's really not a whole lot to see compared to plenty of other cities in North America.
"Entertainment": 2(?) Just guessing here...no first-hand knowledge, no second-hand knowledge, and the city doesn't exactly have a Houston-like reputation for this sort of thing. Feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments - we're willing to change this score if we're wrong
Drinking: 4 Bonus point for being the home of the official beer sponsor of MLS...even if some members of the MLS Rumors² staff consider Budweiser to be a "beer-like product" and not an actual beer. We also vaguely call buying yards of beer at some random bar down at the Landing...yards are good.
Climate: 3 Meh.

Final Score: 18 out of 30. Meh.

Grading the Expansion Candidates III: Atlanta

Really?

Really?

I mean...Really!?!

Atlanta? The consensus choice for worst major pro sports city in the U.S.?

Really?

Okay, fine, let's do this:

Dining: 3 Nothing special, but some good restaurants all the same.
Entertainment: 3 Again, nothing special.
Site Seeing: 2 This would be a 1, but then we remembered Detroit.
"Entertainment": 4 Bonus point for being the home of the notorious Gold Club.
Drinking: 2 No Sunday sales...and it took Georgia until 2005 to repeal their ridiculous 6% ABV limit on beer (thereby sparing Atlanta a 1 in this category).
Climate: 2 Don't we have enough hot and humid cities in MLS already?

Final Score: 16 out of 30...so yeah, really!?!

Grading the Expansion Candidates II: Miami

¡Bienvenido a Miami! Time for part II of our series grading the candidate cities for the next round of MLS expansion...up next: Miami!






Dining: 4 (this would be a 5, but there *are* a handful of better cities in North America for eating) - MLS Rumors² loves itself some Cuban food...plus, even if you keep it Kosher (thereby ruling out just about anything Cuban, with all that porky goodness), there are plenty of options in South Florida.
Entertainment: 5 Seriously, you gonna argue with this?
Site Seeing: 3 I know, I know, beaches, woot!1! However, if you're not the beachy type, well, too bad, no soup for you.
"Entertainment": 5 We've heard stories. You people know who you are.
Drinking: 3 Yes, lots of clubs...but those are way over-priced, so no bonus point - plus, the club scene is reflected in the Entertainment score, above. Also, if you're not a fan of mojitos and such, you're not exactly in drinkin' heaven.
Climate: 3 Repeat after me: MLS is a summer league.

Final score: 23 out of 30. Suck on it, Ottawa. Suck. On. It. Will Canada have the last laugh? Stay tuned!

Grading the Expansion Candidates I: Ottawa

Is MLS Heading Back to the Great White North?

Welcome to our new feature! Over the course of the coming week, MLS Rumors² will be grading the seven candidate cities for the next round of MLS expansion! Rather than re-hash the same old factors (ownership group, "soccer tradition", etc.) that all the other websites have already examined (yeah, we were on vacation...), we're taking a look at some factors that matter to us. Each factor is evaluated on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being teh bestest and 1 being teh suck.

First up: Ottawa!

Dining: 3 There's some good food in Ottawa, but it's no Toronto.
Entertainment: 2 Meh.
Site Seeing: 2 Look kids! Peace Tower, Junior Parliament!
"Entertainment": 4 (Rumor has it that there are some quality establishments in the area. MLS Rumors² hasn't the slightest idea what our sources were talking about, but there you have it.
Drinking: 4 Bonus point for the drinking age of 19.
Climate: 4 Remember, MLS is a summer league...where would you rather road trip to in July: Dallas, Houston, DC, or...Ottawa? Think about it.

Final Score: 19 out of a possible 30. Not bad, Ottawa...but will it be good enough? Stay tuned, folks.

RUMOR: DC-Houston in St. Louis in 2009?

Rating: 5 (Check it, it's gold...You know what, yegg? I believe you.)

With Commissioner Garber set to hold a press conference this afternoon morning [ed: what can I say...see previous post re: hangovers], MLS Rumors Rumors has learned that he plans to announce a bombshell: In order to avoid further bad mojo related to next year's Houston-at-DC fixture, the league will be moving the match to St. Louis. "The match will serve as a measure of St. Louis' interest in an MLS expansion franchise," said Bill the Beerman, who is close friends with Sammy the Stocker, who stocks the beer and sodas in the suite used by Commissioner Garber when he attends matches at RFK Stadium. "The Commish' really thinks they're ready. He's especially impressed that they've already got their own supporters' group, the Sons of Lindbergh. They're supposed to be even more hardcore than the Kolumbus Krew Kids."

(Pictured: The Sons of Lindbergh at a recent pep rally promoting St. Louis as a possible MLS expansion city.)