Dave beat me to it. Miami fans don't support anything
Honestly though, it's one of the biggest reasons that MLS pisses me off so much right now. They'd rather put teams in locations that already have them (LA, NYC), or put them in sexy sounding locations that are absolutely notorious for terrible fan support (Atlanta, Miami) instead of putting them in areas that are already soccer hotbeds even without top level teams in the US (Austin, Raleigh, St Louis).
If they were smart they'd be looking for markets that are just flat out sports-crazy (St Louis) or markets that are more likely to become the next Portland or Seattle type success (Raleigh, Austin) then taking the route they are right now.
Basically what I'm saying is Miami sucks, and Atlanta's not much better. Give us our MLS damnit.
Raleigh is a fine location for the franchise. what's needed is not relocation but for Karmanos to sell the team to a better owner/s.
Somewhat agreed. The other thing needed is for the org to re-tool a bit. Sadly that's at least a couple years away though. Build depth and get guys on reasonable contracts, jettisoning the albatrosses that are keeping us from making the needed changes from a depth standpoint.
It's hard to say that this market needs to be patient when we've been seemingly rudderless for the last half decade, unable to decide if we should sink or swim, unable to decide whether we can be competitive with what we have or whether we need to move guys for futures. That more then anything has pissed this fanbase right off. Not saying the returns for Ruutu and Gleason back in 2012 or whatever it was would have turned out to be anything, but it's not like retaining them helped matters either. It just stings more that we haven't sniffed the playoffs since then sans the first half of one season, where the team was both overachieving and then completely decimated by injuries finishing far worse then it realistically should have.