A push by Robert Kraft and UMass for a professional soccer stadium appears deflated on arrival, with local pols saying the state school should focus more on cutting tuition than cutting deals with rich sports owners.

The University of Massachusetts floated the stadium plan for the old Bayside Expo site, but powerful elected officials in South Boston and Dorchester immediately kicked it to the curb, saying a 25,000-seat facility would only add to traffic nightmares and congestion that already plague the area.

“If we’re going to subsidize anything we ought to be subsidizing the families of these students at UMass,” U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch said, referring to recent tuition hikes at the school.

The bid by the Kraft family, which owns the Patriots and the New England Revolution soccer team, comes nearly 20 years after Bob Kraft’s ill-fated attempt to build a planned football stadium on Massport land in South Boston. That effort also drew heated opposition and was quickly blocked by the late U.S. Rep. J. Joseph Moakley.

The UMass Building Authority owns the Expo land on Columbia Point and planned to finance the soccer stadium with state bonds, which would then be paid off by Kraft leasing the land.

But Lynch, the South Boston Democrat who succeeded Moakley, said any stadium would also need a “massive” public investment in new roads, bridges and ramps in the area near the Expressway, Columbia Road and Morrissey Boulevard where residents and motorists face daily gridlock.

“I think it’s a case of misplaced priorities,” Lynch said, noting that there are other roads and T stations also in need of state and federal dollars.

“You’re going to be taking away the public’s need and giving it for the benefit of a private sports team owner,” he said.

UMass President Martin Meehan is on vacation in Greece, but other school officials said privately that the stadium idea would likely fizzle if there is strong political opposition.

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has declined to take a position on the stadium, with a spokesperson saying only he was “open” to the idea.

Other local elected leaders, including state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry, state Rep. Nick Collins and state Rep. Dan Hunt, said they had serious concerns about the impact of a stadium and said UMass won’t be able to ram it through residents.

“Any proposal for Bayside will need to go through an extensive community review process before it will get my full support,” Collins said.

It also didn’t help that Collins, Lynch and others had been kept in the dark about talks between UMass and the Revolution.

“I’ve never been officially contacted on this by UMass or Bob Kraft or anybody else,” Lynch said. “And that’s problematic.”

Even UMass officials appeared to be trying to distance themselves from the stadium proposal. Spokesman Robert Connolly described the stadium as a “conceptual thing” and described talks with Kraft’s team as “exploratory.”

But other sources said the talks, which started more than a year ago, had progressed recently.

UMass Boston recently began demolishing the rusted-out Bayside Expo and has been using it only for parking. The land is supposed to be used for the school, either as housing or other services for students.