Lion Links: 2/27/15

You better believe it’s Friday.

With the Lions set to wrap up Carolina Challenge Cup play tomorrow (and hopefully bring home the first trophy in the club’s MLS history) we’ve got all the Lion Links you need to make it to 5:00.

Lockout Looming…

Ugh.

It’s no fun to talk about, but an MLS lockout is becoming a real possibility, as players and owners continue to battle over a whole laundry list of CBA issues. But none appears more contentious than free agency.

Taylor Twellman called it the league’s “Curt Flood moment.” With MLS focused on merely surviving its first few seasons in existence, the league’s structure restricted player movement and gave MLS executives an enormous amount of power to help build the league.

But now, with the future of the league looking bright, players want their piece of the pie.

Hopefully, things will resolve themselves without any missed games. But until that happens, MLS fans are going to have to sweat it out for just a little bit longer.

Lions season tickets surpass 13,000

And you thought #FillTheBowl was just for one game?

Orlando City SC season tickets continue to fly off the shelves, with less than 1,000 remaining ahead of the Lions’ home opener against New York City FC. The club section and seats near the midfield are mostly gone.

We’ve talked about how impressive these numbers are before, but it’s worth mentioning again, because Orlando has a chance to post one of the best attendance totals of any team in the league. With 14,000 tickets already sold for every game, it’s entirely impossible that the Lions could post a top-five attendance in MLS this season.

Long story short, the Citrus Bowl is going to be loud in 2015

‘Quakes open new digs

San Jose will cut the ribbon on their new stadium today, as Avaya Stadium becomes the latest soccer specific stadium in MLS.

Seating 18,000 and offering picturesque views from just about every seat in the house, the stadium has been a long time coming for San Jose. The Earthquakes have been forced to a play in a variety of venues that don’t really suit the beautiful game throughout their history, but this place looks top notch.

Orlando City fans should take a good look and picture this thing in purple, because the Lions will be opening their own soccer palace in only a year.

Borussia Dortmund stadium shut down by WWII bomb

You read that correctly.

A piece of leftover artillery from WWII was found at the home of Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund on Thursday, forcing the stadium to close and team operations to shut down while police dealt with the bomb. It was defused safely.

Apparently, this kind of thing is actually pretty common in Germany, which was heavily bombed by the allies during WWII. I don’t care if it happens every day though, it’s still pretty terrifying. At least the only thing we’re worried about here is a lockout.

That’s it for Lion Links today. Have a great weekend.