By Ben Nicholson
June 15 – New York Knicks basketball star Carmelo Anthony has joined the elite club of celebrity athlete owners of football clubs playing in the North American Soccer League (NASL) by creating his own team in his ancestral home of Puerto Rico.
Anthony’s Puerto Rico FC will enter the league in 2016 as the thirteenth team, playing in the 12,500 capacity Juan Ramon Loubriel Stadium in Bayamon. Anthony is the sole owner of the franchise but the option for others to join him remains open.
Anthony said: “My passion for soccer has always been there. I just always kept it to myself and among my circle. Going to games, sneaking into games and just watching and being around the sport over the years. The more time … I started spending in Puerto Rico over the past six, seven years, I realised that there was kind of a void down there on my island. The island didn’t really have anything that they could kind of call their own, that they could represent not just on the island but from a global standpoint.”
Although Anthony proclaimed that he is “very hands-on,” he confessed that basketball is his “main focus,” and he will have “a solid group of people running [the club] on a day-to-day basis.”
Puerto Rico has had multiple inhabitant football clubs competing in the U.S. in years previous: the Puerto Rico Islanders, who had stints in the USL and NASL, and then three teams that played in the USL before returning to Puerto Rico’s domestic league, being Club Atletico River Plate Puerto Rico, Sevilla FC Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico United.
Anthony has set expectations high, stating: “I am committed to bring soccer to the next level in Puerto Rico. To the thousands of fans in Puerto Rico that have been waiting for soccer to come back, I can promise a world-class organisation in a world-class league, with a strong social mission to provide kids the opportunity to participate in this growing sport.”
Puerto Rico FC will find league opponents in teams such as the New York Cosmos, Fort Lauderdale Strikers, of which Ronaldo is a part-owner, and Miami FC, of which Paolo Maldini and Riccardo Silva are part-owners.
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