It will likely remain unclear until Tuesday when FC Cincinnati would officially begin to play in MLSfc cincinnati
MLS is scheduled to announce that FC Cincinnati will join the league as an expansion club at a press conference in the city on Tuesday. The announcement will feature MLS Commissioner Don Garber, FC Cincinnati Owner & CEO Carl Lindner and Mayor of Cincinnati John Cranley. The league will also announce during the event when the club will enter the league. While it is currently playing at Nippert Stadium as it moves toward building its own soccer-specific stadium, FC Cincinnati has pushed to join MLS as soon as ’19 (Ian Thomas, Staff Writer). In Cincinnati, Patrick Brennan notes the team joining MLS in '19 would allow it "exclusive advantages in terms of building the club from a personnel standpoint." FC Cincinnati is "expected to use" Nippert Stadium in MLS play "while the process to begin work on its soccer-specific [stadium] continues." No timeline for stadium construction "has been released or publicly discussed" (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 5/24).
CROWN JEWEL IN THE QUEEN CITY: In Cincinnati, Paul Daugherty writes bringing MLS to the "midsized, modest, conservative corner was, in some very important respects, a grassroots movement." Daugherty: "Our rich diversity of competing interests mixed well with MLS' arrogant insistence that we build a soccer-specific stadium, in a location to the league's liking." From the day FC Cincinnati entered the USL, the "goal of its ownership was membership in the MLS." The group "wanted the good business MLS would provide." It wanted, too, for Cincinnati to "surf the rising wave of pro soccer" (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 5/24).
