Vancouver enters fray as immediate rival to Seattle and Toronto

In an MLS expansion race that saw several cities hold the label of front-runner, it was the quiet and often-overlooked bid from Vancouver that ultimately proved to be the strongest, most stable and most sensible selection by a league looking to keep its growth going.

Darrell Walker/Icon SMI

NBA star Steve Nash played a pivotal role in bringing MLS to Vancouver.

The Vancouver bid was never as flashy as Miami's, or as supported publicly as bids by American markets St. Louis and Portland. However, what Vancouver had was the ideal combination of a financially strong ownership group, a city with an established love for soccer and the existence of natural rivalries.

To Americans, particularly East Coast American soccer fans, Vancouver might not make much sense for expansion, but to soccer fans in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada, it makes all the sense in the world. The instant rivalry with Seattle and the cross-country rivalry with Toronto are key components that make Vancouver's inclusion into MLS such a positive one for the league.

You need only look at the impact on Toronto FC to realize what including Vancouver will mean for MLS. As the only MLS team in Canada, Toronto has been a success on the local front, but gaining respect and a business foothold in the nation was not an easy proposition. By including Vancouver, MLS has given Toronto the Los Angeles to its New York, the archrival on the other side of the country to help soccer establish a truly national presence in a country where hockey is still king.

"Having Vancouver in the league helps us create a national sporting landscape for soccer," said Paul Beirne, Toronto FC's senior director of business operations. "From a business standpoint it makes the overall business, from a corporate sponsorships standpoint, a little more robust because even though Vancouver is far away, it is a natural rival as one of the three major cities in Canada along with Toronto and Montreal."

Vancouver's inclusion in MLS will not only help give Toronto FC a boost on the national level, it should also help provide a push to Montreal to get back into MLS expansion talks after it fell out of the running for 2011 early on despite being considered an early favorite.

As important as Vancouver's impact on other MLS markets will be, it is the city's ability to be cultivated as a soccer market that is even more important to the survival and growth of the market. MLS is convinced that Vancouver is a soccer hotbed capable of drawing the kind of positive response to its arrival that Toronto FC had and the Seattle Sounders are having, and it has good reason to believe that. Vancouver boasted one of the most well-supported teams in the North American Soccer League back in the '70s, and the USL-1 Vancouver Whitecaps have won two USL-1 titles in the past three years in front of modest support (an average crowd of 5,000 to 7,000) that is actually stronger than the support Toronto's last USL-1 team enjoyed before the arrival of Toronto FC (the Lynx drew around 3,000).

Pat Onstad knows all about Vancouver's soccer history, having grown up watching the Whitecaps during the NASL days as a native of Vancouver. Onstad was one of the 60,000 fans in attendance in BC Place more than 25 years ago. Now a Canadian national team goalkeeper and Houston Dynamo standout, Onstad couldn't hide his enthusiasm over the news that his hometown would now have an MLS team.

"It's a fantastic city to host an MLS team and the great thing is that it is going to give more opportunities for Canadian players," said Onstad, who began his professional career as a 19-year-old playing for the Vancouver 86ers of the Canadian Soccer League. The 86ers eventually became the current USL-1 incarnation of the Whitecaps.

"It's a market rich in soccer history and the city really embraced the team during the NASL days," Onstad said. "For me it was huge because my father's background was hockey, so for me, if it hadn't been for the Whitecaps I probably wouldn't have gotten interested in the sport.

"One thing I really like about it is that it creates an instant rivalry with Seattle," Onstad said. "I look back and remember growing up having season tickets to the Whitecaps back in the NASL days and we used to travel down to Seattle with 5,000 Whitecaps fans sitting in the Kingdome. It was just a great atmosphere and a good rivalry."

Vancouver's soccer résumé was a factor in its selection for MLS expansion, but it's fair to say that the financial stability of the city's ownership group was just as important to its selection. With the recession helping scare off and cripple other expansion candidates like Miami and Montreal, MLS needed a group of owners that would be able to build a successful club even amidst trying economic times. In Vancouver Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot, former Yahoo executive Jeff Mallett, Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Luzco and NBA star Steve Nash, the Vancouver MLS franchise has a financially strong and diverse group that has shown MLS an ability to carry out its ambitious plans, which include the $365 million upgrading of BC Place, Vancouver's eventual MLS home.

"British Columbians are excited about hosting a Major League Soccer team in a newly renovated BC Place Stadium beginning in 2011," said British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell in a news conference. "The Vancouver Whitecaps have been a part of our province's history for more than three decades. As an MLS team, the Whitecaps organization will carry on that incredible tradition, as well as generate economic benefits of up to $25 million each season."

So who will join Vancouver in the MLS expansion class of 2011? Portland, St. Louis and Ottawa are the three remaining candidates, though Portland looks poised to be the choice after the city approved a funding measure that should help clear the way for a renovated stadium for a Portland MLS team. If Portland is chosen (and there are rumors circulating that Portland could be unveiled as the 18th MLS team Friday), MLS would then have a trio of teams in the Pacific Northwest in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver to rival the East Coast cluster of New England, New York, Philadelphia and D.C.

And what of St. Louis, a city with a rich soccer tradition that's unmatched in the United States? MLS has consistently alluded to concerns about the bid's ownership group, but recent events that have seen MLS sponsor Anheuser-Busch throw some support behind a St. Louis bid make the city a strong candidate for future expansion if it can't beat out Portland for 2011.

Whichever cities are chosen in 2011 and down the line, they will need to meet the high standard set by Vancouver, which emerged victorious in the MLS expansion race because its bid was always more about substance than style.

Ives Galarcep covers MLS for ESPNsoccernet. He also writes a blog, Soccer By Ives. He can be reached at Ivespn79@aol.com.