Major League Soccer expansion is in the news again, with David Beckham's Miami franchise announcing this week that it finally will begin play in 2020 (no fooling this time!), a full four years after the team was first "officially" launched.
Miami's franchise, and the re-launch of a second Los Angeles franchise this spring, are big news for the league. They're also an attempt to reverse two of the worst expansion decisions in league history.
The Miami Fusion was one of the first two expansion teams in MLS history. Launched in the summer before the 1998 season, it was seen as a natural attempt to tap into the Latino culture of south Florida. As Beckham can now attest, though, the biggest roadblock to success in Miami can be Miami itself. The Fusion owner immediately became embroiled in a feud with the mayor over how much the team would pay to play at the downtown-adjacent Orange Bowl. The end result was the Fusion decamping to Fort Lauderdale.
The dreams of a cool, Miami-centric team were replaced with a squad playing in a converted baseball stadium next to an airport, an hour's drive for many of the planned Miami faithful. Not surprisingly, the team struggled to attract both fans and sponsors.
With the league near death in 2001, it folded the Fusion. Coming just four years after launching the team, it was a major embarrassment.
The short history of the Fusion, though, was a success compared to Chivas USA, the league's first try at a second franchise in Los Angeles. Again, the league was explicitly aiming for the Hispanic market, partnering with Mexican giants Chivas Guadalajara to launch what was supposed to be the new favorite club for Latinos in southern California.
The problem, though, was that Chivas is not just one of the most popular teams in Mexico, it's also perhaps the most polarizing. Anyone who was a fan of another Mexican team was immediately turned off by the idea of pulling for an offshoot of hated Chivas. Even some Chivas fans were insulted by being asked to support a watered-down American version.
The club's on-field results were no better. The team managed the rare feat of having the same number of victories as head coaches (four apiece) in its first season, and was a doormat for most of its existence. A front-office war between two co-owners ended with the parent club's owner, Jorge Vergara, buying full control. He gutted the team's payroll, making the squad into a pseudo-B-team for the Mexican club, and was hit with discrimination lawsuits from American employees who were let go for not speaking Spanish.
