Mr. Cotton Speaks

No, not the pirate from Pirates of the Caribbean who can't speak, but Greg Cotton, the Wizards Executive Vice President. He's written a new entry on Hillcrest Road with some interesting information that I wanted to touch on. The first is continued talk about a friendly tournament mid season involving some international teams. George Shook first talked to Cotton about this back in late January, and it looks like this will happen. From talking to Cotton about this today at the open tryouts, it sounds like the training facility is a major plus for the Wizards to use as a bargaining chip to get teams to come to KC. He also mentioned to me that there are quite a few teams they are talking to right now about it. I'm still very excited about this, I've stated quite a few times that the Wizards haven't hosted a friendly in KC against a foreign team since 1997. Doing this sort of thing has always made sense, numerous teams from Europe come to the US every year for preseason training, why shouldn't the Wizards do like other MLS teams and schedule a game or two against some of them.

Cotton also mentions the stadium and that the process is still continuing. He mentions the bar/pub that will be built in connection with the stadium. He talks about a specialty brew specifically for the Wizards and the bar. Knowing how much the Cauldron and other Wizards fans are of beer, Cotton mentions that the supporters will be in on the process of selecting the brew.

There's plenty of other interesting news in the post, but the last thing I want to touch on is the fact that the Wizards are looking to create more club partnerships with teams in England, Italy, Germany, Argentina, and China. The Wizards currently have a partnership with Mexican club Atlas, which has brought rumors of Daniel Osorno to KC as well as rumors of a friendly, but so far nothing concrete. Establishing more partnerships will continue to give the Wizards more name recognition, and as always, the possibility of player loans and such. I'm interested to see what teams the Wizards are talking to about this.