A member of David Beckham’s MLS ownership group, Marcelo Claure, has hinted that news regarding a potential MLS franchise in Miami could soon be on it’s way. The club, which had its latest downtown stadium proposal rejected, could be in line for some good news, the CEO of Sprint told a morning program on Univision.
“We have a new project which is buying a soccer team for Miami,” Claure said. “We are partners with David Beckham, and with all the problems that we have had with Miami politicians [for a] stadium, I think we’re in the final part of making some important announcements.”
Claure went on to say that he’s made it his personal to ensure Miami is a city with a professional soccer team.
“It can’t be that the most Latin city in the country doesn’t have a soccer team,” Claure said. “My job is to make sure to change that. It’s very important to me that Miami has a soccer team.”
Beckham’s struggles to find a stadium site for his club have been well documented. After trying to acquire a portion of land on the southwest corner of PortMiami, he turned his focus to a parcel near the American Airlines Arena. After Miami’s mayor, Tomás Regalado, ruled out that site on June 10, things went quiet for Beckham & Co. until he was recently invited to look at a piece of waterfront property that was the former home of the Miami Herald.
Regardless of the difficulty in finding a site, however, Beckham remains confident telling Bloomberg on September 10th that bringing a team to Miami “will happen”.