This past week, news came out that Major League Soccer has trademarked both Empire FC or CITY FC and speculation began over these names being for the 20th Franchise in New York City
The good news about this, is when MLS starts to trademark potential names, you know a potential deal must be progressing to a pretty advanced stage. In the past, when these rumors came out, team announcements were not that far off from the distance.
However, fans of the New York Cosmos will begin to wonder what this means. This news, added to the silence of the Cosmos will begin the worries that all has fallen apart again in Soho.
This is not the case.
Recently, NASL Commissioner David Downs stated that the Cosmos plan to be ready for their next season and expects a venue announcement in the near future.
As for Major League Soccer, Commissioner Garber has stated he has turned his opinion on the Cosmos brand, here is a quote from an interview he did a little less than one year ago
“I will say that more and more I am beginning to get caught up a bit in the Cosmos fever. While I don’t regret we didn’t purchase that logo when it was made available to us in 1996, I do believe now that there just seems to be a lot of momentum behind the relaunch of that brand and bringing back some of the excitement and appeal that the Cosmos were able to generate not just here in NY but around the world.”
We will continue to monitor all of this on This is Cosmos Country.com but we expect a lot of changes before the final product.
Maybe empire fc is a Red Bull Rebrand.
MLS can have them. Either way both names are rather weak imho.
i agree with gene the names seem kinda cheesy and lame but not bad. i like City FC alot more than Empire FC but i like Empire FC as well. i hope they actually spell out Football Club on the TM application instead of just tacking on “FC” and expecting it to sound legit. i speaks aesthetics though. anyways this could be signs pointing to the 20th club. as much as i would love to see Cosmos back in the top i doubt that will happen now. the biggest deal breaker is the whole single entity debacle. Cosmos ownership (and i side with them whole heartily on this issue) have major issues with single entity as it bascially gives MLS complete power and ownership, while MLS wants to keep the logo and name. but i trust Cosmos will help out NASL and truly compete against MLS. If we had a connected open system Pyramid we woudlnt have this problem because clubs provide the product. but since this is America the league provides the product for the clubs to us so we need leagues competiting to improve the product cuz lets face it, MLS is a joke
+1