When the United States takes on Canada in the CONCACAF Gold Cup at 8 p.m. tonight, there will be a lot of people watching. They are expecting a solid crowd at Ford Field with 25,000 tickets sold as of late Monday night, and there will be fans from across North America watching at home on Fox Soccer Channel, Telefutura and Canada's Rogers Sportsnet. But to soccer fans in Metro Detroit and across Michigan, the most important sets of eyeballs watching Tuesday's game will be those belonging to executives from Major League Soccer.

With the opening week festivities of the Gold Cup at Ford Field expected to be the focus Tuesday, the future of professional soccer in Metro Detroit may lie about 30 miles north at the Pontiac Silverdome where Triple Sports & Entertainment has plans to bring a Major League Soccer expansion team to the newly-resurrected facility.

Triple Sports and Entertainment, the owners of the Silverdome, have taken the next formal step toward acquiring an expansion team by submitting an application to MLS with the goal of fielding a team in the next few years. However, they will have to get in line as bringing a second franchise to the New York market is currently front and center according to MLS officials.

"We're in discussions with the league, and we've met several times," said Steve Apostolopoulos, the president of sports at the Silverdome. "There is a process that potential ownership has to follow and we're very happy with how things are progressing."

In 2012, the league will welcome Montreal as its 19th franchise and all efforts are being made to make sure a team based in the Big Apple is next in line.

"MLS is aware of the interest from the Apostolopoulos family in securing an MLS team in Detroit," MLS spokesperson Will Kuhns said in an e-mail. "The League maintains its current focus on New York as a possible home for the 20th team."

MLS has four basic criteria for expansion teams: (1) Committed long-term ownership with deep pockets, (2) Approved plan to build a soccer-specific stadium where the team would control revenue streams such as parking and concessions, (3) A healthy media market and (4) A strong soccer fanbase.

The Apostolopoulos family comes in with the first three taken care of, and really the only question is how strong is the soccer fanbase in Metro Detroit?

It's difficult to gauge since there hasn't been a competitive soccer match in Detroit since the Silverdome hosted four games of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, which were a big success 17 years ago. Since 1994, there has only been one major soccer event in the city and it was last year when 30,000 fans showed up to watch Italy's AC Milan take on Panathinaikos from Greece in a pre-season exhibition game.

Steve Apostolopoulos is confident that Detroit is one of the best sports towns in the country and says that grassroots supporters groups will form the foundation of the fanbase that will come out to support the team if MLS approves them.

"We enter [owning an MLS franchise] as passionate soccer fans first and foremost," said Steve Apostolopoulos. "If you're in this business purely to make money, then you're in the wrong business. With passionate supporters groups like the Motor City Supporters, American Outlaws and Michigan Ultras, my job is a lot easier because we all have one thing in common. Together we have a strong voice for soccer."

The Toronto-based Triple Sports and Entertainment made headlines in the Fall of 2009 with the purchase of the vacant Silverdome in a private auction for the bargain price of $583,000. When they acquired the stadium, which had not been used since the Detroit Lions left after the 2001 NFL season, they announced they had plans to revive the stadium and to acquire an MLS franchise to play in it.

This began the process of bringing pro soccer back to Detroit, something that has not existed since 1980 when the Detroit Express competed at the 'Dome in the old North American Soccer League. Since then, the group has fixed up the stadium to host a variety of events like concerts, motorcross races and monster truck rallies.

Before their "Match of the Titans" with AC Milan and Panathinaikos, they revealed their unique plans to renovate the 35-year old stadium.

Since 80,000 seats is too much for even MLS' top draw, the Seattle Sounders, who average more than 36,000 per game at Qwest Field, the Apostolopoulos family plans to remove the dome and divide the stadium into three sections.

At the stadium's ground level, will be a convention center/concert hall as well as a multi-purpose arena, capable of hosting hockey, basketball, and other indoor sports.

Resting on top of those two indoor facilities, will be a roughly 30,000-seat outdoor soccer stadium with natural grass. The current upper deck will essentially act as a lower bowl for the outdoor stadium.

In theory, the facility could house as many as 70,000 people at one time. It's difficult to imagine, but maybe this will help.

If you have a ticket in the front row of the current upper deck, with this proposed layout, you could lean over the railing and get an autograph, or catch a player doing a "Lambeau Leap."

The renovation, which is the brain child of Steve's father Andreas, who owns Triple Properties, the parent company, is unlike anything in the history of sports and they are anxious to show it off.

"We have the renderings nearly complete and I can't wait for fans to see what this stadium will look like," said Apostolopoulos. "MLS has been amazed with the plans we've shown them."

This would be a first in MLS' relatively short history (the league played its inaugural season in 1996), where the owner is retrofitting a stadium to attract an expansion team.

The construction to pull off the renovation, which will employ as many as 2,500 workers, can be completed very quickly because of the unique arrangement.

"The good thing about these renovations is that 99% of the construction can be done under the dome, so you could have two or three shifts and have construction running 24 hours a day without any weather issues. So if we get approved, things can move very fast."

The bones of the building are in "amazing shape" which bodes well for the transformation, which could be completed in less than a year.

"We're definitely in the top tier of potential MLS expansion cities and the league is very engaged with what's going on in Detroit, U.S. Soccer is involved, and [the Gold Cup] is very good for Detroit."