The Colorado Arsenal
09. Feb, 2007 
7 Comments
Or maybe it’ll be Arsenal Colorado. Whichever name is ultimately picked, the MLS is set to announce a partnership between Arsenal and The Colorado Rapids.
What exactly does this mean? For The Arsenal – not much. For the Rapids and the MLS – a whole heckuva lot.
While details of the agreement haven’t been officially announced, for Arsenal it sounds like it basically amounts to the addition of the Colorado Rapids into Wenger’s considerable pool of talent from which to pluck new players, giving promising youngsters from the United States a chance to train and potentially play with the Gunners. The deal will also allow the Rapids to change their name, colors, and branding to incorporate “The Arsenal”.
While I think the deal is fantastic, particularly for the MLS, I’m not a huge fan of the name change. I feel like the best course of action to increase the popularity of the MLS is to emulate some of the more successful parts of European Football. Sponsors on shirts, David Beckhams, partnerships with European clubs to swap talent, bigger television deals, etc. are all helping the state of the MLS immensely, but I think they would be better off building their own brand with their own team names and not copying European team names or conventions too closely. I mean, who honestly thought that “Real Salt Lake” was a good idea for a team name? Just watch, we’ll probably see “AC Galaxy” soon.
Anyway, Arsene Wenger cleared up some of the confusion here: Wenger dismisses Colorado Rapids takeover talk. He also claims there will be no pre-season USA tours by The Gunners. While it would be nice to see them in Los Angeles at some point, avoiding tours like that for the time being is probably for the best. Barca did a US tour in late 2006 but I didn’t go because, well, it was Barca.
too bad about the name–i would have like to see it change to incorporate Arsenal somehow…hope it happens later on in the future.
Maybe they could do just one appearance in Denver? My parents live in Denver. Much easier for me than Los Angeles. I wouldn’t be adverse to them coming out to Seattle either.
Also, Real Salt Lake is a ridiculous name. At least the new soccer stadium in Colorado has something to do with an arsenal.
And what is the deal with MLS teams adding “FC” to their names? It should be “SC” or something. If we’re going to call the sport soccer in the US we should stick to it.
Argh.. there goes my dream of seeing Arsenal in the US. Oh well. I’ll keep saving up for that trip to London.
Ahhh, they just did the press release and rebranding showboating. They kept the Rapids name, which is a good choice! They just changed the colors and crest.
http://web.mlsnet.com/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20070209&content_id=83403&vkey=pr_mls&fext=.jsp
i hope they make the name change at a later date. that would be way cooler than Rapids. Dumb name for a club. Rapids? what’s that supposed to mean? Gunners i understand — you kill your enemies. Rapids? you overturn their canoes? Duh.
I am upset because I Iiked teams other than Colorado in the MLS. Now it appears that it has to be Colorado for me.