It’s been a heady week for soccer in the city of Cincinnati.

On Monday, the group hoping to land a Major League Soccer expansion franchise unveiled renderings for a proposed stadium.

Two days later, the city’s 2-year-old United Soccer League team, FC Cincinnati, packed its home stadium with 30,180 fans and scored an enormous upset with a 1-0 defeat of Columbus Crew SC of MLS in a fourth-round matchup in the U.S. Open Cup.

“In our wildest dreams, as we started this wonderful club … we would have dreamed as big as a night like tonight,” Cincinnati General Manager Jeff Berding told reporters on Wednesday.


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A week like this can lead a soccer team and its supporters to believe it has made an emphatic statement to MLS about its worthiness to pony up $150 million to join the top soccer league in the country.

But in the light of day, reality strikes, and San Diego knows how that feels.

Cincinnati has three possible stadium sites, but hasn’t settled on one. And while its prospective owners have pledged $250 million in private funds, they are seeking $100 million more in public support while maintaining they won’t ask for a tax increase.


There are complications such as those in nearly all of the 12 cities that submitted expansion bids to MLS in January. The league hopes to award two franchises by the end of this year and another two sometime in 2018.

For San Diego as a city and FS Investors, the group hoping to bring MLS to town, the competition can be viewed through two prisms: There are enough cities far enough along to possibly knock San Diego out of the top four if a stadium decision here is significantly delayed; or, almost none of the prospective owners can positively tell you where their team will play or how their effort will ultimately be financed.

Since January, some markets -- Sacramento, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Phoenix, and Cincinnati -- have seemingly strengthened their positions. A few others – Detroit, Nashville and San Antonio – are fully viable, with hurdles to overcome. Four others – Indianapolis, Charlotte, Raleigh and St. Louis – appear to be dribbling a flat soccer ball.

An updated look at each market:


Sacramento

MLS would have to completely ignore a bunch of positives in California’s capitol city to not put a franchise there. Sacramento Republic averages No. 2 in USL attendance – 11,569 – the prospective MLS ownership group has rich, well-connected people with pro sports ties, and is far along in securing land on the edge of a downtown rail yard.

A rift between Republic FC’s owner and the MLS bidding group looked like it might fracture Sacramento’s unity on the project, but that problem was solved in May when Sacramento Kings minority owner Kevin Nagle, leader of the MLS bid, purchased the Republic.

(Like Cincinnati FC, Republic produced a watershed win over an MLS team this week, routing Real Salt Lake 4-1 in the U.S. Open Cup.)


Cincinnati

Things would be a lot simpler for Cincinnati if MLS embraced the team playing long-term at the University of Cincinnati’s 40,000-seat Nippert Stadium. It has been a fine venue for a club that is averaging a USL-best 19,415 this season.

But MLS prefers a smaller, soccer-specific venue, and while FC Cincinnati has identified three possible stadium sites – including one across the border in Kentucky – financing remains an issue.

The ownership group – fronted by billionaire S. Craig Lindner – made a play Monday to further excite the fan base and local leadership by unveiling the design renderings of a 25,000-seat, horseshoe-shaped stadium that was inspired by German club Bayern Munich’s home.


Tampa/St. Pete

The Tampa Bay Rowdies of USL and their owner, Bill Edwards, moved one step closer to joining MLS when they won a May referendum in a landslide (87 percent). It allows the St. Petersburg city council to negotiate a long-term stadium lease with the club.

Edwards stands ready to spend his own $80 million to expand waterside Al Lang Stadium to 18,000, with the only question now facing MLS: Is it comfortable (or maybe does it prefer for rivalry purposes) putting a second team 100 miles away from highly successful Orlando City?

Phoenix


The Valley of the Sun has much the same appeal for MLS as San Diego, and maybe more. Phoenix has a thriving soccer culture, a large Hispanic population, and is a larger television market. The downside: Maybe there’s too much competition from the city’s other pro sports teams.

Phoenix Rising FC and its ownership are making the MLS bid. Rising is a USL team that is averaging full capacity (6,628) this season. The ownership group has showed it’s serious by hiring Goldman Sachs to explore private financing to build a stadium and soccer complex on a 45-acre site just northeast of Arizona State.

Detroit

The prospective Motor City owners have plenty of money – they are NBA owners Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores. They know where they want their stadium – on the site of a half-built jail. They’ve offered to build a $420 million jail and justice center elsewhere in exchange for getting the current jail land for a sports and entertainment complex.


One catch is that they want Wayne County to give them the $300 million that it was going to cost to finish the first jail. A touchy subject.

The owners are supposed to provide an update soon.

Nashville

Thanks to the Predators’ run in the Stanley Cup, Nashville’s sporting stature is better than ever, and its desire for more pro teams seems only counterbalanced by its relatively small market size.


Music City is just discovering higher level pro soccer, with a USL expansion team set to begin play next year. MLS bidder John Ingram already has purchased controlling interest of the team to present a united front, while the organizing committee includes Tennessee Titans President and CEO Steve Underwood and Predators President and CEO Sean Henry.

The mayor of Nashville is pushing for a private-public partnership for a stadium to be built on the local fairgrounds, but her hopes have yet to produce financing.

San Antonio

Seemingly starved for more sports, the owners of the San Antonio Spurs are leading the MLS bid, which hinges on a December bond measure that would fund a $100 million upgrade to Toyota Field, the home of the USL’s San Antonio FC.


Indianapolis

The Indy Eleven, a current franchise in the North American Soccer League, suffered a blow to its expansion hopes in April when the Indiana General Assembly concluded its session without passing legislation that would help fund a downtown soccer stadium. The next session doesn’t begin until January.

Raleigh, N.C.

Those are crickets you hear coming out of Raleigh. No legtimate stadium deal is in the offing.


Charlotte, N.C.

Charlotte’s bid was dealt a setback earlier this year when the city council decided not to consider spending $43.75 million to help fund an MLS stadium.

St. Louis

Once considered an expansion favorite, St. Louis’ effort was derailed when voters rejected – by the margin of 3,000 votes – a half-cent business use tax that would have contributed $60 million to the building of a new stadium.


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tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutleonard