Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Major League Soccer dipped its figurative toes in the Hudson River, downtown along Manhattan’s West Side, as it considered building a new stadium at Pier 40. The league, which seems committed to placing its 20th team in New York City, also scoped out more than a dozen other possible locations — including the West Side Yards; Greenpoint, Brooklyn; Willets Point; and the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx.

Now, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, that search has shifted from Manhattan to Queens, specifically to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the site of World’s Fairs in 1939 and 1964.

According to the article, M.L.S. officials have been recently working with city officials on designs for a new 20,000- to 25,000-seat stadium that could be built on about eight acres in the northern part of the park. The park is already home to the United States National Tennis Center and is just over the tracks (subway and Long Island Railroad) from Citi Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Mets. The park has long been home to Hispanic soccer leagues and the three-year-old Cosmos Copa tournament.

Building the stadium on city-owned land was probably recognized by the league as the path of least resistance. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plans for a vast redevelopment of Willets Point, now home to a collection of auto parts stores, could take years to reach fruition. On the West Side of Manhattan, hearings on the Pier 40 site disclosed that it would take more than $100 million simply to prepare the decaying infrastructure to accommodate a new stadium.

According to the article, the league says it would take probably two years to complete construction of the privately financed stadium, after it receives the necessary approval from city and state officials. The Journal added that part of the league’s proposal is the construction of new soccer fields for public use, a cricket field and volleyball courts.

Using the slogan “the world’s game should be played in the world’s park,” Dan Courtemanche, the league’s vice president for communications, told The Gothamist Web site that: “Our goal is to have a second team in New York at the earliest opportunity. The New York market is a priority, but it may take a couple of years before we have the team and stadium finalized. We believe another team in New York will build upon the momentum the Red Bulls have and ultimately create one of soccer’s great rivalries similar to what we see around the world in cities like London and Buenos Aires.”

The Red Bulls are now playing their third season at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J., a stadium that cost the beverage company Red Bull more than $200 million to build and that has mired the city of Harrison with perhaps crushing debt.

If the league lands its 20th team (M.L.S. added a 19th team in Montreal this season) in New York City, who owns the team and what it will be called remains an open question. The stories Cosmos, who ruled over the North American Soccer League in the 1970s and ’80s before the league folded, have new deep-pocketed owners who are interested in playing in M.L.S. but who have also expressed an interest in playing in the lower division N.A.S.L., perhaps at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Long Island.

M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber continues to assert that a stadium deal would attract a slew of possible investors, other than the Cosmos group, now run by Sela Sports, which is based in Saudi Arabia.

But as with so many other potential real estate projects in New York City, time (a lot of it) will tell.

Follow Jack Bell on Twitter.