The team is expected to begin play in 2020 at a 25,000-seat stadium in the impoverished Overtown neighborhood between Downtown and Little Havana.
The former captain of the English national team David Beckham to Unveil Major League Soccer Team on Monday(MLS) in Miami, after four years of bureaucratic obstacles and fierce opposition from neighbors to the Stadium in the city center.
Last Friday, the MLS said it will make “an important announcement about the future of the soccer team in Miami.” and invited the general public to attend the event.
“I don’t think it’s an advertisement for the name, I don’t think it’s an announcement of where (the stadium will be located) either,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told CBS .
The 25th team of the MLS begins play in 2020 in a 25,000-seat stadiumin the impoverished neighborhood of Overtown, between Downtown and Little Havana.
This historic area, with amajority black population, was already irretrievably divided by a network of highways in the ’60s and now its neighbors fear another blow: the inevitable gentrification that will come with the stadium. In addition to the foreseeable vehicular chaos because the project does not contemplate parking.
Beckham announced in February 2014 his intention to buy anMLS franchise for Miami, which thanks to the terms of his contract with Los Angeles Galaxy could acquire at a reduced price (25 million).
Since then the project has been postponed due to difficulties in finding the right venue for the stadium. These same obstacles have already derailed efforts to have an MLS team in such a Hispanic city in the past, even though it would be logical to expect soccer to be well received here. The Miami Fusion, with the Colombian Carlos Valderrama as a star, ended up playing in Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, and had a short life (from 1997 to 2002) due to the minimal attendance it attracted.
Do not repeat mistakes
Beckham and his partners, convinced that they will not repeat this mistake, have insisted on locating the stadium in downtown Miami, between the America Airlines Arena, home of the NBA Heat, and Marlins Park baseball stadium.
“I always believed in this project. That’s why I never gave up,” Beckham told CBS on Sunday night. “I knew Miami was the city. I knew this was going to be special.”
Last year, the team came close to securinga $9 million purchase of land in Overtown, but the sale was stymied by a lawsuit from the millionaire. Bruce Matheson, who has in the past avoided expanding a tennis stadium into a public park in Key Biscayne. Matheson lost the first round, but is appealing and the conclusion will take a few months.
The MLS Commissioner, Don Garber said last month that the Miami franchise projectIt was “the most complicated situation we have experienced in any market”, due to Miami’s political structure and dynamic real estate market.
But in December the brothers joined the project. Jorge and José Más, Children of the deceased anti-Castro Jorge More Canosa. Millionaire businessmen and heavyweights in the local elite, their contacts are expected to help Beckham navigate the meanderings of local bureaucracy.
Beckham, 42, retired in 2013 after 20 years career and resounding triumphs in Manchester United, the Real Madrid, the Galaxy and Paris Saint-German. He also played for England from 1996 to 2009.
Fountain: https://www.elespectador.com/noticias