DETROIT, MI -- With the announcement last week that Major League Soccer has planned to expand from 20 to 28 teams by 2020, not many were surprised to hear that Detroit was named as a candidate city.

MLS commissioner Don Garber mentioned Detroit as a potential market when he officially announced the expansion last week. Yet, soccer fans in the Detroit area heard it countless times before -- and some are not getting their hopes up.

"A lot of people are, obviously, going to be a little hopeful and that fine," said Dion DeGennaro, one of the leaders of the Northern Guard, a supporters group for the Detroit City Football Club of the National Premiere Soccer League. "But there's no substance behind what Don Garber said in my opinion and what I know in the area. If it's not Don Garber, it's (Michigan Bucks owner) Dan Duggan with some sort of 'hey, we're going to be bringing pro soccer' and, ultimately, it doesn't amount to anything."

DeGennaro, 26, lives in Farmington Hills and handles a lot of communication for the Northern Guard, including social media interaction. Being a fan of soccer as long as he can remember, DeGennaro says rumors of a MLS team coming to Detroit is "a once-a-year occurrence."

Drew Gentry, 35 of Grand Blanc, is the co-founder and "head capo" of DCFC's Northern Guard Supporters. He is best known by the moniker "Sergent Scary" at DCFC game, leading the constant chants, cheering and smoke bombs -- among other things. Gentry shared an email exchange with MLive and doesn't mind accusing the MLS of crying wolf over a team coming to Detroit.

"How loud it gets every year just depends on who says it and whether the public picks up the story and runs or just ignores it," Gentry wrote. "I've become accustomed to, if not apathetic to the rumor mill after going through it annually. Don Garber likes to throw city names around to drive up expansion prices ... he's a businessman. I'll believe that MLS will come to Detroit when it kicks off its first match, and not a moment sooner."

Yet, it is not just the year's of broken promises that has DeGennaro, Gentry and fellow Northern Guard supporters unenthusiastic about the MLS coming to Detroit. In fact, the biggest concern for the leaders of the Northern Guard is an MLS team being brought to the city and kicking out the club it has been dedicated to.

Don't uproot the grassroots

DCFC has been, by many standards, a huge success for soccer in Detroit. It is a semi-professional team in a league that is considered to be the fourth tier of soccer, compared to to the first tier that is the MLS. Yet, that did not stop swift and passionate support for the program when it began in 2012.

Playing its home games at Detroit Cass Tech High School -- just outside the heart of downtown Detroit -- DCFC has set new attendance records year after year and has since outgrown the stadium.

Over the course of the last year, DCFC made plans to move to Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck, a city completely landlocked by Detroit. Thanks to over $740,000 dollars of funding from business of all sizes from the metro area, DCFC has been renovating and updating the 80-year-old stadium. DCFC will play its first official game of the season at Keyworth Stadium on May 20.

The funding project was called the largest of its kind by the DCFC organization and is just one of many examples of how the soccer club has entrenched itself in the city of Detroit and with its supporters from across southeast Michigan.

From the club's ravenous fans to the funding project, DCFC has drawn attention from news sites across the country and beyond. In February, United Kingdom publication The Telegraph ran a story on the team's stadium efforts and its impact on the Detroit soccer scene.

"DCFC has brought light to what we're essentially calling 'The Detroit Soccer Movement.' It's drawn the eye of the nation ... and the world. I wouldn't say we don't want the attention, but what we don't want is our motives to be misinterpreted. We're about growing our club, our community, and the people thereof."

Naturally, it is fair to say that the development of DCFC has only helped shed a brighter spotlight on Detroit when it comes to being a candidate to host an MLS team.

Yet, if the MLS is established in Detroit, it will not get everyone's support within the DCFC community -- unless the expansion MLS team is actually DCFC.

"Is the expansion club Detroit City FC? Does it involve the current group of owners that, along with the supporters, have built the club to what it is? If not ... sorry, not interested," Gentry wrote. "I won't support it ... I won't attend a match. I'm sure others would, and that's their opinion they're allowed to have."

In return for DCFC's impact on the soccer culture in the city of Detroit, the "City 'Til I Die" battle cry is one that has been taken to heart by the Northern Guard Supporters. If the MLS does expand to Detroit without DCFC as its team, it will threaten everything that the Northern Guard stands for.

"We don't want someone else coming in and kind of ruining the work that we've spent blood, sweat and tears on over the last four years. A lot of time, energy and money spent trying to grow what we have already."

Basically, a new MLS team can be a real threat to the grassroots soccer community and team that Northern Guard is a part of.

DeGennaro and Gentry both point to Atlanta and Cincinnati as examples of what can happen in Detroit. Both cities had grassroots clubs in lower tiers like DCFC and both were bounced out of town by the eventual arrival of higher-tier teams. The Cincinnati club played in the same league as DCFC, the NPSL. Yet, in 2015, a United Soccer League franchise -- a tier above the NPSL -- entered into the market.

"Last fall, a (Cincinnati) team was announced in the USL and it's called FC Cincinnati," DeGennaro said. "It's an outside, big-money investor coming in and said, 'hey, we're going to bring pro soccer to Cincinnati and we're going to have a lot of corporate sponsors.' There's nothing wrong with corporate sponsors but it just didn't seem very genuine and didn't care about the community. It definitely didn't care about the team that had been there for six years prior."

Ultimately, the Saints left town and relocated to Dayton, Ohio at the end of 2015.

What happened in Cincinnati and now with the MLS expansion, it all plays into the "at any cost mentality" that the Northern Guard recently posted about on the group's Facebook page.

"Atlanta's NASL and Cincy's NPSL clubs, respectively, had been in their markets many years, but were offered up as sacrifices so individuals who never attended an existing club's match could unlock some proverbial 'life achievement' of having an MLS club in their city," Gentry wrote. "We have a saying in the DCFC community - 'Don't wait for a great club to be given to you. Make the club you have the one you want.' - and that mentality is in direct contradiction to what we're seeing unfold across the country."

It takes a lot of money

Another talking point that DeGennaro brings up is that it takes a lot of money to run an MLS team. Not only that, a team needs a stadium, a full staff, executives, etc.

By contrast, DCFC was started by a group of five Detroit area friends that pooled their knowledge and resources together. Now, it takes a fee of $10,000 to start up an NPSL team while, according to Forbes, the average player salary in the MLS in 2015 was $282,499. According to ESPN, expansion fees for the MLS are at $100 million.

"Even to get an MLS franchise, it's $100 million," DeGennaro said. "That's not including the stadium. That's not including any players. That's not including trying to get people to work at the stadiums and paying them. That's just to get into the league. That's not a low amount of money."

So, even if DCFC does become an MLS team in the future, it is going to need new owners to foot the bill.

"I don't think it's possible in the near future," DeGennaro said. "I don't think anyone with that kind of money ... I can't see anybody willing to front that. If you look at the cost of the (Red Wings) arena district right now, it's something like $629 million. You're talking $700 million to get a serious soccer team here in Detroit. I just don't kind of see that money happening right now, especially with Detroit City FC."

DeGennaro said that, ideally, the Northern Guard would like to see Detroit City FC bumped up to the North American Soccer League -- the second tier -- but to do that will mean the team will have to have an owner with a net worth of at least $20 million, according to league rules.

"We would love it whoever came in realized the work that we were doing here in Detroit but all depends on the type of person that has that money and what they would like to accomplish."

Although DeGennaro says there are a lot of different opinions among those in the Northern Guard when it comes to MLS expansion in Detroit, the only good option in his mind is to make sure the team that he loves and supports remains a focal point of soccer in Detroit.

"What really is most important, regardless of what league comes to town, is to use what you already have," DeDennaro said. "No one is going to come into town if there is no demand for what you have already. I would much rather have people coming in that might want MLS and don't realize what we have already and be like, 'Oh, wow, this is really cool. The atmosphere is incredible' ... and kind of open their eyes."