Hold off on the season tickets Edmonton

I don’t know if we’ve ever announced that (we would be partnering with Edmonton) I think what we said is that we are having a healthy dialogue with our friends in Edmonton and that was an option for us to have a farm team in Edmonton, in USL at the time. We are still hopeful that we can run a NASL team, but that is something that has not been confirmed by MLS.

That's Bob Lenarduzzi on yesterday's It's Called Football talking about the possibility of playing division two football in Edmonton after the ‘Caps move to MLS in 2011. Late last year the Edmonton Sun reported that the Edmonton Drillers were set to re-emerge in then, under a partnership with the Vancouver Whitecaps. The idea being that the 'Caps could use the Drillers as a farm team (and Lenarduzzi used that term -- farm team -- to describe the possibility).

However, as you can see from the quote above, it seems that the news of their re-birth was, if not grossly overstated, than at least a bit jumping the gun. Lenarduzzi implied that it was MLS that was holding things up.

MLS will be looking at the Whitecaps with equal parts horror and fascination. The 'Caps, in many ways, are already doing many of the things that MLS one day aspires to do (or, at least, claims to aspire to). They are developing players and selling some off for profit -- you know, like the rest of the world and operate in a true club system.

MLS, however, can be a tad bit conservative at times and one wonders if they are willing to allow one of their members to have a farm team. After all, if one team has one everyone will need to as well - gotta be fair, that's the MLS' way.

Lenarduzzi said that he expected to have some news "soon" regarding the academy system in general and sounded positive that the news would be good (of course everything Lenarduzzi says sounds positive. He's a positive guy. Shocking, since he once coached the Canadian national team, but it is what it is!). You might imagine that the farm team issue is tied into the academy issue, so maybe Edmonton fans are close to getting the good news.

For real this time.