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Posted Mar 18, 2009, 11:34 AM
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Some more press coverage about the imminent announcement:
Quote:
Whitecaps travel a long road to return to the big leagues
By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun - March 17, 2009
![](http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/www.vancouversun.com/whitecaps+travel+long+road+return+leagues/1399655/1399661.bin)
An artist's rendering of B.C. Place stadium decked out to host a Whitecaps soccer game. Photograph by: .,
VANCOUVER — The first time around, they played in a league of luxury hotels and pricey international stars on their last legs.
Heady days for the Vancouver Whitecaps — and ultimately unsustainable.
Today, a humbler attempt begins, as the second incarnation of the Whitecaps becomes the 17th member of Major League Soccer, essentially the North American Soccer League’s smarter offspring: still the top league we’ve got, but on a lot shorter leash.
MLS commissioner Don Garber is expected to announce today that Vancouver will begin play in 2011.
For the team known these days as Whitecaps FC, it has been a long road back — a road that led from the Canadian Soccer League to the A-League to the United Soccer Leagues, and from the Vancouver 86ers to a rechristening under the name that still conjures up memories of sellouts in Empire Stadium and the 1979 Soccer Bowl championship.
Vancouver’s MLS entry, backed by current owner Greg Kerfoot, former Yahoo president Jeff Mallett, Seagate CEO Stephen Luczo and basketball star Steve Nash, had to pony up $40 million US ($50.7 million) to get to the head of what was once a seven-city list of expansion candidates.
“Fortunately, the people of Vancouver have supported soccer at whatever level it’s been at,” said Whitecaps FC general manager Bob Lenarduzzi, the most visible constant in three decades of soccer’s evolution and devolution in Vancouver. “The USL is good football, but MLS is a brand, like the NHL, like major-league baseball. It’s the best league in these parts.”
Reluctant to speak of a done deal because “we’re still sorting out some details,” Lenarduzzi was clearly thrilled Tuesday to be close to the finish line.
All along, the 86ers/Whitecaps have soldiered on admirably, winning more than most, keeping the pulse alive, but languishing deep in the shadows of the Canucks and Lions even as they won the USL title last year.
Limited by the leagues in which they played, and the knowledge that the most gifted Canadians would find their way to European clubs (or, since 1996, MLS), the Whitecaps were spinning their wheels. The club fielded hard-working sides with plenty of moxie but little star power, chronically dependent on the hardcore followers at 6,800-seat Swangard Stadium.
There were only two possible exits from the treadmill: the MLS, or a new stadium. In the end, they got one and almost the other.
Kerfoot’s offer to build a Gastown stadium looking out across the Burrard Inlet ran into so much nit-picking opposition, it was finally superseded (if not yet killed) by the $365-million plan to renovate and re-roof BC Place Stadium for the 2010 Olympics and beyond.
The new configuration has a roof-within-a-roof draping system that will turn a cavernous 60,000-seat football stadium into a cosy, 20,000-seater for soccer. And the MLS imprimatur should do the rest.
Toronto FC, the lone Canadian MLS team, and the Seattle Sounders, who start play this year, are already astounding success stories.
“Have you been to a Toronto FC game? It’s unbelievable. It’s like being in Europe. It’s unlike anything else in that market,” Lenarduzzi said. “They have capped season tickets at 16,000 and have 14,000 on a waiting list. That’s phenomenal, ridiculous. And then you look down the road here at Seattle, they’ve capped season tickets at 22,000.”
The Seattle Sounders begin MLS play this week, three hours and two years away.
ccole@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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Source: Vancouver Sun
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