Soccer deal is within reach, say sources

Major League Soccer is moving swiftly toward an agreement that will grant a long-sought expansion team to the Philadelphia region, several sources have confirmed.

Representatives of the prospective team and the league are down to discussing details concerning the new club - talks having progressed past "if" and on to "how" and "when," they said.

The sources, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the timing, said that:

In the last two days, the local owner-investors completed their review of the draft version of the expansion agreement between MLS and the team, which would play at a riverside soccer stadium to be built in Chester.

Local representatives have been meeting with senior MLS executives at league offices in New York.

The investor group is working with Pennsylvania officials to identify the accounts and precise dollar amounts from which a promised $47 million in state funding would be drawn.

People familiar with the work accomplished during the last two weeks - since Gov. Rendell announced the award of state funding - believe the Philadelphia bid has assumed an aura of inevitability, capable of being derailed only by an impossible-to-foresee cataclysm.

"It's definitely Philly," said a Major League Soccer source, declining to be quoted by name in advance of an official announcement. "It's the market size, the ownership group. These are wealthy people. They're going to be strong owners."

The league source said that St. Louis, which has contended with Philadelphia to become the 16th MLS team, would be the presumed front-runner for any future expansion.

MLS spokesman Dan Courtemanche said yesterday the league was "continuing discussions with the potential ownership group to bring a Major League Soccer expansion team to Philadelphia." He had no further comment.

The team would play at a $115 million stadium to be built near the Commodore Barry Bridge in one of Pennsylvania's poorest cities. The arena would anchor a $500 million complex of stores, restaurants and housing.

The local group, which includes iStar Financial chief executive officer Robert Sugarman and Swarthmore Group chairman James Nevels, has spent months working to land a team, even as several other cities pressed their bids.

In mid-January, MLS officials confirmed that it had become a two-city race. St. Louis had a stadium deal but lacked sufficient financing. Philadelphia had strong ownership but no stadium deal - until Rendell's Jan. 31 announcement.

In interviews this week, several analysts said word that MLS was poised to award a team to Philadelphia shouldn't strike anyone as news - the signs have been obvious:

The St. Louis group brokered its deal for a stadium in September. If the league had wanted to put its next team there, all it had to do was say yes, and the bulldozers would have rolled. Instead, observers noted, the league extended its own deadlines, from November through January and potentially into March, effectively giving the Philadelphia group more time to work out a stadium-financing plan.

"If Philadelphia wasn't in the mix, then St. Louis would be the 16th team," said Jeff L'Hote, founder of LFC International, a New York soccer-business consultancy. "I think something catastrophic would have to happen with the Philadelphia bid for it to move out."

Hours after Rendell announced the state funding, lead St. Louis investor Jeff Cooper said his group would have to concentrate on capturing the 17th MLS team. The next day, soccer executive Nick Sakiewicz announced that he had joined the local ownership group as its CEO. Sakiewicz is a two-time MLS executive of the year, credited with securing the deal for Red Bull Park, a soccer stadium being built near New York.

"A gentleman like him, who has been around the league, isn't going to make a move like that unless things are very solid," said Derek Aframe, former vice president of the New England Revolution and now an executive at Octagon, a sports-and-entertainment marketing company.

As for the timing of an official announcement, Aframe said he suspected the league would choose an event at which it could maximize media coverage.

Philadelphia is the largest market in which MLS does not operate a team.

"If you're a major professional sports league, you need the major cities, and they're missing Philadelphia," L'Hote said. "The funding for the Philadelphia group, in my mind, secured Philadelphia's future as an MLS team."

That doesn't mean the Philadelphia bid couldn't still somehow falter. But people familiar with the process don't expect that to happen.

"The stars are aligned," said a local sports authority who has watched the expansion effort. "Philadelphia will get the 16th franchise."