If you missed it yesterday Major League Soccer is coming to Vancouver in 2011 [mbv], and you can reserve your right to be the first in line for seasons tickets starting tomorrow at the official site of Vancouver’s embryo of an MLS team [vm11].  Meanwhile the Seattle Sounders, who last year played in the United Soccer Leagues (USL) first division with the Whitecaps, played their first game in the MLS having made the jump to the big leagues this year.

They beat the New York Red Bulls, though I haven’t been able to figure out whether or not former Arsenal winger and Calvin Klein underwear model Freddie Ljungberg played for them [av].  He’s been nursing an injury, and basically has spent the last few years of his career in various states of injury.  Arsenal fans will remember him fondly, especially for this great goal in the FA Cup against Chelsea [yt].  Here’s another video of it and this one includes Ray Parlour’s goal [yt] and some nice shots of Tony Adams being Tony Adams and thus awesome.

Hmm… sorry wrong blog for that sort of thing.

After years of rumours [mbv] it seems like Vancouver is going to get an Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise.  Granted it’s at a slightly low point for the MLS, after the David Beckham experiment which was meant to prove that soccer in America was on its way to becoming as much of a force as it is in Europe has failed.  Beckham’s decided he prefers playing in the semi-retirement league that is Series A in Italy and is paying out of his own pocket to stay there.

 Meanwhile what this means for the Whitecaps we’re not sure.  The ownership group of the new team is largely the same as that of the Whitecaps with owner Greg Kerfoot heading the group that paid the $35 million dollar fee for an MLS franchise, but it seems like it’s not a sure thing that the new team will be called the Whitecaps and there’s clearly not enough soccer support to keep the two teams going in Vancouver. 

The new team will play in BC Place as opposed to Swangard, because if you can’t sell out Swangard you’re might as well go big and not sell out  BC Place.

The example of Toronto FC [mbv] shows that a Canadian city can support professional soccer, but the population and demographics are a lot different in Toronto than they are Vancouver.  The success of the new MLS team is hardly a sure thing, on or off the pitch.

Of course now this also means that there’s no way that we’ll ever get any sort of media accreditation for the Whitecaps.  While the team is great at calling me back to renew my season tickets, they’ve never once returned an email or a call about press accreditation for covering the Whitecaps games.  Any of the photos for the posts on the team I’ve taken have been with a camera that I’ve learned how to smuggle into games.

As a former (damn economy) season ticket owner I hope the new team succeeds.  I do think Vancouver hast the potential to support another major league sports franchise in town, and this will certainly be less of a fiasco than the Grizzlies were, and I am very eager for some higher level soccer to be played in town.  Even if there will be no David Beckham.  Even if I have to assemble my camera in a washroom stall so that I can cover the games.

There’s a few things that I’m tired of hearing about around town. Be warned these five things are on notice.

5) The Hollow Tree in Stanley Park [gm]:  It’s a tree, it was killed by God.  That’s the way nature works.  If it was torn down to put up a Starbucks, yeah then we can have some sort of fit about that.  It’s not a metaphor, it’s a damn tree.  Get over it.

4) The dollar: I get it, it’s crazy that our dollar is so strong against the American one.  Yet it’s been like that for months now.  You can also add any story about how Product X is so much cheaper in the US now because of the dollars’ values.  We all get it.  It’s boring now.

3) The Canucks: Let’s just ignore the losers and hopefully they’ll all return to Sweden and never come back.  Instead let’s talk about (soon-to-be) former Canuck Trevor Linden [bb] whose far more interesting.  Though keep it to a minimum, he’s getting pretty close to going on the list to.  Remember he’s a hockey player, he only walks on frozen water.  For a team that actually wins something try the Whitecaps [wcfc].

2) How the Olympics are destroying everything: People were homeless before we won the Olympics and they’d still be homeless afterwards.  Let’s be honest we as a society don’t give a shit about the problem of the homeless, and if 2010 was not going to be in Vancouver all the money spent on the Olympics would not instead have been used to feed and clothe those who need it.  The money probably would have been spent on magic beans, ferries that we’ll never use or a space program.  The Olympics make an easy target because it’s billions spent on things like watching men in superhero costumes slide down a frozen tube in a piece of fiberglass, but they’re nowhere near the root cause of the problem.  Show some intelligence and try to find that root instead of just raging against the wrong machine.

1) How the Olympics are really going to revitalize the city:  Right because the thing holding back Richmond from becoming a world class suburb was the fact that it didn’t have a giant speed skating rink.