Major League Soccer, which established a world record by threatening to leave Minnesota on the day a franchise got awarded to Minnesota, is now turning its attention for a stadium, reluctantly, to St. Paul.

We don’t even have a prom dress. We were so overlooked in the eagerness to bring soccer to downtown Minneapolis that it did not occur to anybody over here to throw a hat into the ring. But a July 1 deadline came and went and Mark Abbott, MLS deputy commissioner, having been told that St. Paul has a mayor, too, has agreed to talk to Chris Coleman, who is out of town and is sending messages back through intermediaries saying, “Yeah, well, uh, sure, we’ll talk.”

I guess Bill McGuire and Glen Taylor and a Pohlad or two, who all own Minnesota United, couldn’t swing a deal in Minneapolis to get property- and sales-tax exemptions from the Legislature, which was suffering from stadium burnout, as are we all. The fellows do want to privately build a stadium for about $150 million, but like all owners of major league franchises, they need a little taste from the public to “make it work.”

It took years for the late Mike Lynn to arrange a downtown domed stadium for the Vikings. Why, he had the Vikings relocated at one time or another in every big city west of the Mississippi. He finally got the Metrodome and dragged poor Calvin Griffith downtown with him. Calvin didn’t know what hit him, but he went along.

Then the Twins, realizing that a domed stadium was not the golden path to future riches, worked for years to get a new downtown outdoor ballpark. At one point, the commissioner of baseball at the time, Bud Selig, threatened contraction if the Twins didn’t get a new yard. Contraction was a more agreeable way of saying we have a gun at your back.

The Twins finally prevailed and now play, of course, at Target Field.

That left the Vikings still hermetically sealed under the big top, so they started threatening and finally got their way, with Zygi Wilf charitably announcing that he will personally pay for televisions and Wi-Fi. Other than that, we have no idea if he has been familiar enough with his own wallet to even open it.

Oh, and the Gophers got a new stadium, too.

So, yes, stadium fatigue all around.

That makes it all the more understandable why MLS made its threat on the day the franchise got awarded. Why dally? The way the game gets played around here is you huff and puff and blow the Legislature down. Might as well start at the opening bell.

Only, Minneapolis didn’t bite, didn’t pressure the Legislature. They have their ducks in a row, a couple of new ballparks and more restaurants and craft-brew pubs than can be tallied.

Abbott virtually admitted to 1500ESPN, which is KSTP-AM 1500, that he is desperate and that he is using St. Paul in order to get Minneapolis to reconsider. Gee, there must be a little stretch in that July 1 drop-dead date.

“We thought that we should go and learn more about (St. Paul), and that is what we intend to do,” Abbott said. “If somebody in Minneapolis came forward (with a stadium plan), that would be tremendous because that is something that we’ve always wanted.”

Not only don’t we have a prom dress, but our so-called date still has his arm around another gal.

The two sites in St. Paul under consideration are the razed site of the old bus depot at Snelling and University avenues and the site where the Sears store now stands near the Capitol. Neither site will fly.

To attend a game at either the old bus depot site or the location of the Sears store, you would actually have to want to attend a soccer game.

That isn’t what this is about. This is about luring fans to a soccer game because they are already hanging around downtown anyway at the restaurants and brew pubs that are too numerous to count.

In Minneapolis.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.