[dropcap]P[/dropcap]rofessional soccer in Detroit may be a reality as soon as 2015, as Michigan Bucks owner Dan Duggan has reached a preliminary agreement with USL PRO to bring a team to downtown Detroit starting next season.
“We’re going to follow the model that’s worked successful for the last five teams that have gone from USL to Major League Soccer — the last one being Orlando City that’s going next year,” Duggan said in a phone interview Tuesday. “They went from USL Pro to MLS in three year’s time, and they had to do it with a downtown stadium in mind.”
“Meetings with [MLS] Commissioner [Don] Garber made it very clear that if there’s ever going to be MLS in Detroit, it has to be downtown, so there’s no sense in doing this in a two-step process. We might as well bring the pro team down there, and let’s find out if the people in Detroit are going to support it as wildly as everybody says that they will, and I hope that they will. If we can have a three-to-five year run similar to what Orlando and Portland and Seattle and Montreal and Vancouver have done at our level, then we can hopefully make the transition and go right into MLS in the near future.”
Duggan said that he was not at liberty to currently disclose which downtown locations are being looked at as possible sites for the stadium. The initial press release Tuesday indicated the ideal facility would be a “5,000-seat stadium with open hills in the end zones that would enable 8,000 fans to be a part of the USL PRO experience.” Initial estimates suggest that the site would span anywhere from 2.5 to seven acres of land for the project, also.
While he acknowledged that many heavily-discussed cities like Miami and Atlanta — he also included Midwest front-runner Minneapolis — likely won’t be unseated for the upcoming window of planned MLS expansion, despite calling Orlando City an outlier, Duggan said that corporate backing and rapid fan support could potentially create a short-term window where Detroit could see its way into the picture.
Many USL Pro teams currently are connected with MLS affiliates, and Duggan indicated that he expects to forge a similar relationship in Detroit when the plan is approved.
“We’ve spoken with many of the MLS teams…we’ve got until June 13 to get our ownership group and our stadium plan together, and once that is formally accepted by the USL, the next step will be forging a relationship with one of the MLS teams who have expressed doing business with us,” Duggan said.
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