The city of Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, is considering whether or not to extend their lease with a minor league baseball team. Jerry Reese, Charlotte real estate lawyer, desperate to keep the team in Fort Mill so that they won't pursue a stadium in an uptown Charlotte location, is proposing to build a new facility in Fort Mill.

By this point, I'm sure you're wondering what any of this has to do with soccer, and so I'll explain; included in Reese's proposal for a new facility is a note that he hopes to convert the team's current home into a Major League Soccer stadium.

While I have no idea if Charlotte might ever get an MLS team, or if this Fort Mill plan actually has any chance of happening, I find the "news" interesting for a few reasons. First, it's an indication that professional soccer, and MLS in particular, are being thought of as worthwhile target for these type of proposals; Fort Mill isn't exactly, well, Charlotte itself, but there's something to be said for the thought even occurring to Reese. Second, MLS continues to attract interest from cities around the country (and Canada for that matter); this isn't an expansion bid, which would require an ownership group and significant investment, but it does show that soccer is on the minds of powerful people.

• Our good buddy Jack Warner is making waves again, this time bad-mouthing England's World Cup bid. Excuse me, and many others, for seeing Warner's outburst as a not-so-subtle call for "donations" to his personal bank account. Is that an unfair assessment? Not considering Warner's track record. Still, a small part of me would like to hope that Warner is tearing down England's bid because he wants to push the US one, something I can definitely get behind. Maybe the ends don't justify the means, but I just want the World Cup back in the US so badly...

• The NCAA site has a nice piece on the history of college soccer in St. Louis, usually viewed as the first and most significant American hotbeds of the sport. It's one of the reasons the city continues to gets mentioned as a place that MLS should expand to; whether or not that passion for youth and college soccer carries over to the professional game is the question. Conventional wisdom has St. Louis getting into MLS eventually, and the area may have a USL team in the near future (pending the resolution of the USL mess).

• Speaking of the USL mess, the drama continues, with the Team Owners Association members meeting with USL officials and US Soccer in New York; Dave Clark at Sounder at Heart has an excellent piece on the situation and how it might shake out. I've never been a proponent of the "farm system" model as it's usually been proposed (including in this space by guest poster Vnice), but I may be open to a second/third division setup that allows MLS teams to place their reserve squads in those leagues. Dave also mentions the X-factor in all of this, the business interest that is MLS/SUM. What role they have to play will be interesting to see.