Ottawa’s Major League Soccer ambitions got a significant boost yesterday.
But the chances of the new team playing home games on grass fell into the Ottawa River, and are riding the long flush out to sea.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Just to catch up, our nation’s capital is considering two very different stadium proposals. On the one hand, you have Ottawa 67’s owner Jeff Hunt, who has been granted a CFL franchise, conditional on finding a place to play. (Frank Clair Stadium has been partially demolished, and the parts that still stand need a huge lot of work.) On the other side stands Senators’ owner Eugene Melnyk, who has been assured by MLS commissioner Don Garber he will get a team if he builds his lovely proposed soccer-specific park.
The main issue – aside from whether building ANY stadium makes sense for public governments in this deeply declining economy – is that the two plans have been incompatible.
Until, perhaps, yesterday.
Melnyk told city councilors what they most needed to hear – that his park could, in fact, accommodate the CFL as a tenant.
I’ve always felt this tussle was going to go to the first owner who could find a way to build for the other’s sport. If Melnyk is ready to sic architects on his cozy park’s presently proposed sidelines to make room for CFL end zones, we may have ourselves a winner, kids.
But there will be one not-insignificant cost for soccer fans.
As I’ve noted before, it is certainly possible to play CFL football on grass. What’s next-to-impossible, though, is playing competent pro soccer on grass that has played host to the CFL.
It’s like playing billiards on a shag rug; like bowling in a gravel pit; like putting in a pig farm.
The ball just won’t run right after all those huge guys with all those brutal cleats grind like opposing glaciers in tight, constrained scrums a couple of hundred times a game.
That means Ottawa’s hopes are brighter, but Melnyk FC will be playing on artificial turf. They may not tell you that right away, for PR purposes, but you can bank it.
Still, that’s certainly no reason to want the Ottawa bid to fail – unless you’re out in Vancouver, given that Portland is getting its act back together, to the point where Garber won’t snub Oregon to hand both 2011 expansion chits to Canada.
So this ever-shifting game of musical soccer parks appears, this morning, to line up as Portland/Canada in 2011, with Canada 2 having an inside track for 2013.
Just at the moment, all three Canadian MLS sides (Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa) would be playing on plastic. Montreal has grass, of course, but has bargained its way clean out of the picture, and seems content.
Of course, we haven’t heard the last of Jeff Hunt’s CFLers, who I expect will now draw up a proposal that embraces soccer. Keep in mind, though, MLS would want soccer to control the stadium, playing landlord to the CFL. Melnyk remains the only horse in that particular race.
Thoughts?
Onward!