Atlanta United packed its stadium for its first MLS opener Sunday when 55,297 showed up, the league’s largest attendance and the world’s fifth biggest for a soccer game on the weekend.Amazed? So was MLS commissioner Don Garber. “I was just speechless and I’m not speechless very often,” he marveled. “This is just remarkable.”He had every reason to wonder.MLS all but abandoned the Southeast in 2002 after not one, but two money-losing Florida teams. The Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion were folded at the same time before they took the seven-year league with them, too.Yet here was a mammoth crowd taking in a regular season MLS game, more confirmation the domestic game is making headway in an area that has sometimes seemed indifferent or even openly hostile to it.And it followed on the heels of Orlando FC’s box office success.The second-year club drew a regular-season average of 31,324 last year, behind only the Seattle Sounders (42,000-plus), although with a move to a smaller soccer-speci sport world...
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برچسب : نویسنده : جمشید رضایی sporty بازدید : 335 تاريخ : پنجشنبه 19 اسفند 1395 ساعت: 12:33