St.Louis sports fans, the message was clear this past week coming from a written letter from Silent Stan Kroenke, the man who 6 years ago told everybody in St.Louis to relax the Rams are staying, is now telling fans that I’m taking the Rams back to L.A. and you fans are living and a dying city in his 29 page recommendation to the NFL, that the team must move now. He won’t mention that his team hasn’t had a winning season since the first term of George W. Bush Presidency.
I give a lot of credit for Dave Peacock, Bob Blitz and Governor Nixon for putting up a stadium plan to keep the Rams in St.Louis and they deserve a lot of credit for doing so. But NFL people such as executive vice president Eric Grubman, one month ago told St. Louis sports radio host Bernie Miklasz for a 43-minute discussion, that St.Louis have not submitted a “compelling proposal” to prevent the Rams from leaving. In other words: St.Louis haven’t dish out enough money to build a new stadium and the relationship between a team and its current fan base isn’t a compelling enough.
He’s my advice to St.Louis sports fans, forget about NFL and lets go after a Major League Soccer team. St.Louis has a long soccer history that goes way back to 1891 when the city started its own soccer league which many soccer clubs were started by local Churches and parishes and later local retail companies and manufacturing companies. The U.S. Men’s World Cup team in 1950, which pulled off one of the great upsets in World Cup Soccer History against England 1-0, had five of the eleven players on the from the historic Italian town The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis. Saint Louis University Billikens have won a record 12 NCAA National Championship is Soccer. There are currently 29 players from St.Louis that have been inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame and several current or former players played in Major League Soccer, like Mike Sorber, Matt Pickens, Brad Davis, Taylor Twellman, Tim Ream and Steve Ralston. Lets also remember our beloved St.Louis Steams who played in the old Major Indoor Soccer League from 1979 to 1988 and at one point outdrew the St.Louis Blues in four consecutive season in 1980-82 through 1983-84.
My advice for Dave Peacock is to focus a plan to build a privately funded soccer specific stadium on the Riverfront between the ranges of $80 million to $200 million dollars. Perhaps he should include Saint Louis University as part of the deal to share the stadium with the Billikens soccer program and a future MLS team. Last month Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber announced that the League will expand to 28 teams and, the value of an MLS team in St.Louis could end up ranking within the five in part of the history of soccer in St.Louis. Last summer Saint Louis FC played Sporting Kansas City in front of a packed sell out crowd in Kansas City, Kansas. The two cities can continue with the I-70 derby in which the both towns could reap the benefits of a natural soccer rivalry match. Right now the NFL is the King of American Sports and losing NFL team in less than 30 years will suck. But lets think long term, in 10-15 year the NFL will be losing popularity and it’s audience when you hear story’s of players suffer from concussions symptoms and paralysis. Let’s brings in some real football (futbol).
1974A 