The recent Honduras-Chile friendly in Miami was moved to Ft. Lauderdale after Chilean coach Marcelo Bielsa refused to play on FIU’s FieldTurf. Could this FieldTurf issue signal larger problems with FIU stadium and the Miami bid?

Potential MLS investor Marcelo Claure fires back after the jump…

Courtesy SoccerAmerica

“Miami has all the ingredients,” says Claure, whose extensive cell-phone and communications businesses are based in the city. “Fort Lauderdale is not the place to play soccer. They don’t have a stadium with the perfect capacity. We have all the ingredients, it’s up to us to make it work.

“[FIU] spent $54 million to build a stadium and they play only five home games. It’s brand new. It might not be the most beautiful stadium, but it’s a B-plus. We are in West Miami, where all the non-Cuban Hispanics live.”

He has also clashed with MLS about starting up next year, not in the proposed next round of expansion in 2011. If serious problems develop with the Chester (Pa.) stadium project, scheduled for completion in time for the 2010 season, so goes the scuttlebutt, MLS may have no choice but to go with Miami, and push Philadelphia back to 2011.

Image via Daylife