Don't meet me in St. Louis

All eyes in the local soccer world this morning will turn to Washington, D.C.

Yeah, only a smartass would follow that with some snippy comment like: Sure, both of them.

Actually, there’s a ton of soccer zealots in the Delaware County region.

On Sunday, we are going to introduce you to some of them in our print edition. We are planning to take a long look at the Sons of Ben, the local group of soccer fanatics who have been pushing for a Major League Soccer franchise for the Philadelphia region. It’s part of a package we’re preparing on the hoopla surrounding the possible move by Major League Soccer into the Philadelphia market.

A big group of them is headed for Washington, D.C., this weekend for what amounts to their Super Bowl. It’s the MLS Cup title game being played at RFK Stadium Sunday afternoon.

Actually, they expected to have two reasons to party.

This morning MLS Commisioner Don Garber will deliver what amounts to his "state of the league" address. For several weeks it was expected that he would announce this morning that indeed the league would be putting an expansion team in Philadelphia. That team would play its games at a stadium to be built in Chester.

The word now is that won’t happen. At least not this morning. We’ll still be monitoring Garber’s speech. And we’ll let you know what, if anything, he has to say about the league’s next expansion team.
Earlier this week the league awarded a franchise to Seattle that will begin play in 2009.

Now everyone is wondering who will be the 16th team in the league. It looks like Philly/Chester is in a kickoff with a big push from a group in St. Louis.

Even if No. 16 goes to the city under the Gateway Arch, that does not mean we’re out of the running. Two more franchises are expected to join the league in the near future.

No one is quite what sure what Garber is going to say.

But there’s a lot of guys wearing scarfs who call themselves Sons of Ben who will be huddled around computers waiting for those words to dribble out of Garber’s mouth.

They might be disappointed. At this point, hearing nothing might be preferable to hearing this: Major League Soccer takes great pride in awarding its 16th franchise to …… St. Louis.

Oh, the indignities of being a Philly fan. Even when it comes to soccer, it seems like we’re always getting kicked around.

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