State-Funded Soccer Team Official!

Hooray! Chester, long shut out of the non-horse racing, non-Chester High School sporting world, has finally made it to the big time. Today the Sons of Ben have more to celebrate than the Wikipedia entry for the club surviving its deletion attempt.

We finally have a soccer team in Chester. The heroic agreement between a bunch of politicians and a bunch of investors will give $47 million of free money to rich people. There’s also going to be development! The stadium will be anchoring this even though everything everywhere ever has said stadiums aren’t a great anchor for community development. It will also be near a casino, of course, so that the transfer of money from the poor to the rich will continue. Chester and Delaware counties will also be contributing $30 million.

Why all this public money for a soccer stadium? Well, team investor Nick Sakiewicz summed it up nicely: “So - otherwise it would not happen.” On that note, this is $77 million politicians can’t waste on things other than a soccer stadium, and they’d just screw it up anyway.

The team doesn’t have a name yet, and the possibilities are endless: Bandits (as in one-armed), Vandals (it’s near the prison!), Chester Gentrification FC and, of course, the Subsidies. But, really, there’s no name better than the one a friend came up with, the Camden Riversharks of Chester. I can’t wait!

Update: In other soccer news, some 23-year-old youth soccer coach in Montco pled guilty today to unlawful conduct with a minor for sending dirty texts to a 13-year-old. And the prosecutor tries to make a funny, I think: “The thing that really struck me is he’s talking about skills in terms of sexual skills when he’s supposed to be teaching her soccer skills and that’s what’s really troubling to me…the context in which they met.” Yeah, that’s what struck me too.

Update 2: Just so you know, I am way totally psyched for a soccer team in town! Not as psyched as I would have been when MLS formed, but you take what you can get.