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'Put on hold' MLS-WUSA cooperation remains on the backburner
Updated: Saturday April 28, 2001 11:45 AM
ATLANTA (CNNSI.com) -- Don't look for the Women's United Soccer Association to begin operating a Major League Soccer team in your city any time soon. A year ago, MLS and WUSA were forming competing plans for a women's division-one professional league in the United States, knowing only one was likely to be sanctioned by the sport's governing body, the U.S. Soccer Federation. The competition came to an end in May 2000, when the two entities reached an agreement to cooperate on marketing, scheduling, promotion and stadium development. At the time, MLS commissioner Don Garber and WUSA founder John Hendricks were most enthusiastic about an agreement for each league to potentially expand with ownership from the other league. Garber later went on record as saying that the next round of MLS expansion -- possibly as soon as 2002 -- would likely feature a team in the New York area operated by the MetroStars investors. The other, it was hinted, would be operated by a WUSA investor, most likely either in Atlanta (Cox Enterprises) or Philadelphia (Comcast Corporation). However, based on Garber's more recent comments, expansion will not occur before 2003, while Atlanta and Philadelphia have fallen down the list of potential MLS cities. WUSA chief operating officer Tony DiCicco said this week that such expansion plans had been low on WUSA's priority list as the league prepared for its launch. "'Put on hold' is a good way to phrase it," DiCicco said. "We're working 20-hour days to get this league launched. "That is such a big project. We just don't have anyone to work on it right now," he said. "It's an investor-to-investor project. "We do have a good working relationship with MLS. I met with [chief operating officer] Mark Abbott and [vice president-legal] JoAnn Laurentino from MLS this week. We're talking about exchanging boards at games; we want to show the public that we are working together and cooperating to grow soccer. Joint ownership, he said, "hasn't been dismissed, but it hasn't been addressed either. "It's something that was put out there last year when they spoke and since then we had no time to really get into detail, and they really haven't either."
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