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SANDY — Alexi Lalas could hardly start smiling last week as he toured Real Salt Lake’s sparkling new training facility that cost nearly $80 million on the western edge of the Salt Lake Valley in Herriman.

The U.S. international legend and first-ever American-born soccer player to sign with a club in Italy’s Serie A, Lalas knows a thing a two about soccer. He played in Major League Soccer in its infancy, went abroad, came back, and spent time as a general manager and other front-office positions before taking his current employment as a broadcaster with Fox Sports.

And seeing the facility, with its miles of field — both natural and artificial, its weight rooms, its cafeterias, its 5,000-seat Zions Bank Stadium … well, it was almost enough to make him disappointed, in a good way.

“It’s too much. I’m completely against it,” Lalas told good friend and RSL team broadcaster Briain Dunseth with a dry, sarcastic tone. “They are so spoiled, this generation, that I fear we are going to raise an entire generation of soccer players/dreamers that don’t really have any sense of appreciation or perspective or responsibility.

“It is night and day from what we grew up in. I joke, but it’s wonderful to see.”

Lalas’ comments parallel the growth of Major League Soccer since Real Salt Lake joined the league in 2005. Back then, RSL was among a handful of expansion candidates, joining the now-defunct Chivas USA in 2005, just ahead of Toronto FC — another city that has grown to be a jewel in MLS.

Now, that’s hardly the case. Markets are clamoring to join the league, readily eager and begging to pay the league’s reported $150 million expansion fees for a chance at bringing the highest level of professional soccer in North America to their city.

And it's markets like Salt Lake — with its snow-capped mountains, its 200,544 population, and its soccer-centric training facilities — that are succeeding in that regard.

It’s not the million-citizen markets that are attracting MLS like Los Angeles and New York City (though they certainly have their place, with two teams in each of those respected locales). It’s cities like Nashville (population 691,243), Austin (population 950,715) and Miami (population 463,347), all of whom will join MLS in the coming years.

And it’s markets like Cincinnati, whose newly minted expansion club FC Cincinnati will host Real Salt Lake at 5:30 p.m. MT Friday at Nippert Stadium (KMYU, KSL.com). Cincy will try to snap a four-match losing skid at home, much in the same way RSL day recently with a 2-1 win over Orlando City SC.

The FC Cincinnati team celebrates after forward Darren Mattocks (11) scores on a free kick in the first half of an MLS soccer match against the Sporting Kansas City, Sunday, April 7, 2019, in Cincinnati. (Photo: John Minchillo, AP)

But off the field, the match will feature two of Major League Soccer’s success stories — one a market that no one thought could succeed but rose to build one of the early soccer-specific stadiums in America and eventually capture the 2009 MLS Cup title, and the other a club that fought through lower-division success until it was granted first-tier access through its sellout crowds and passionate fan base in "The Queen City."

Both are the kind of expansion efforts MLS commissioner Don Garber likes seeing in his league.

“Clearly expansion has been a driver of growth for the league, and it’s not the expansion fees; it’s the expansion opportunity,” said Garber, speaking with reporters last week prior to honoring RSL owner Dell Loy Hansen at the Governor’s State of Sport Awards. “You’re growing your fan base, you’re growing your footprint, you have more facilities, you have more opportunity for a broader and more interesting broadcast agreement because you’re not showing the same teams on TV all the time.”

Salt Lake City holds a special place in Garber’s heart because it was one of the first expansion opportunities in the commish’s 20-year tenure. It also proved to be a model of expansion success for the league, which is now bordering on 28 teams — and still growing, with expansion candidates ranging from Sacramento to Phoenix to Detroit and Tampa Bay.

All could take a lesson from RSL’s book, Garber said.

“Dell Loy has created a model market,” he said. “My hat’s off to Dell Loy. He is a bundle of energy and has so many things he can do with his resources, and he devotes a lot of resources to Major League Soccer and our sport.”



Alexi Lalas Real Academy Tour by Real Salt Lake on Exposure

Part of Hansen’s success in Salt Lake City isn’t just soccer-related, either. The landowner, contractor and developer made his fortune elsewhere before getting into soccer as former RSL owner Dave Checketts’ minority investor in 2009 before gaining for control four years later.

And beyond soccer, Hansen's vision of RSL's academy includes more than just soccer. The RSL Academy High School is a state-sanctioned charter school, with emphases in science, technology, engineering and math, that includes hundreds of students who will go an entire career without kicking a soccer ball.

But that's an advantage to the community too, Lalas says.

“Are we worried and concerned about raising better soccer players, or are we concerned about raising better Americans?” he asked Dunseth rhetorically. “If you have an academy, a high school, incredible resources and stuff that blows my mind, then you are raising young men and women who are going to lead what I think is the greatest country in the world.

“You can’t qualify that when it comes to expenditure. You are putting people into the American system, armed with tools.”

It’s all part of the growth of the business of soccer — and that’s OK, too.

“It’s OK to look at sports as business,” Lalas said. “it doesn’t mean you aren’t competitive and don’t want to do well at your job. But you recognize that if the business is not there, the league is not there.”

Real Salt Lake (2-4-1, 7 points) at FC Cincinnati (2-3-2, 8 points)

When: Friday, April 19 at 5:30 p.m. MT

Where: Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati

TV: KMYU

Streaming: KSL.com

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