I'm so far past losing the stick up my ass about the disparaging comments some unnamed U.S. Women's National Team player made about Major League Soccer some years back that I probably can't find an example of it in the archives of my several blogs. As such, I have only warm thoughts to emit in the direction of the ongoing and improving project to re-establish the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA).
Hmm. As it turns out, it's somewhat necessary to go back down that dark road, because what that unnamed player said about "not wanting MLS to piggy-back on our success" (weird to read, but it came in the context of the 1999 Women's World Cup) matters today, though in the opposite sense she intended it - at least for now. In ESPN's write-up on this news, Jeff Carlisle spoke to the people working on bringing a soccer franchise to St. Louis. While Carlisle reports that a deal for a temporary facility for a women's team is "close to being finalized" you'd have to think it going to taxpayers and investors with two teams professional teams on the table - which translates to 26 guaranteed revenue-earning events under MLS's current set-up and the assumptions about WUSA's schedule - would improve the chances of approval from either. Then again, maybe that's more an argument from logic that won't hold up to real-world scrutiny.
In any case, bundling teams from both leagues seems like the surest way to go. Being a liberated kind of guy, I don't care which league/gender rides on the other going forward; I'm happy so long as both leagues exist and do well enough to stick around.
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