MLS Commissioner Don Garber

Just in case you thought Major League Soccer was not-too-serious about helping to facilitate D.C. United’s exit from Washington — even though they’ve been surveying Baltimore residents about potentially relocating United to the city — well, think again.

In a media conference call this afternoon, MLS commissioner Don Garber — who has, in the past, not been shy about expressing his frustration with the District’s refusal to fund for a new United stadium — spoke openly about United’s precarious financial situation. Here’s Garber, as transcribed by Post soccer writer Steven Goff:

“We need a solution, and I’ve been pushing Kevin [Payne] and Will Chang to try to find that solution. If that means, if they can’t get a new and improved lease in D.C., and they’ve got to move to another facility in the region, I will be supportive of that, and in fact, will help them do that. If it means they can’t find a solution in Baltimore, then we’ll have to go through a process as we did with San Jose [which relocated to Houston in 2006] to think about potentially moving the team.”

It gets worse:

“Short of having somebody say, ‘You privately finance a stadium on your own with no support, no tax advantages, no land, no public participation at all,’ we have not been either offered an opportunity to participate with the public on a mechanism that would make financial sense and also work for the community and for what we are trying to achieve from a business perspective, there are very few 100 percent privately financed facilities. That’s not something that would make sense for us in D.C., and that’s not at all because the owner isn’t capable of doing it. Our challenge is, we have started and stopped a half a dozen times over the last number of years, and at this point, it’s very clear to me there is a traffic jam taking place in your city that probably rivals some of the other traffic jams that take place in your city. It’s been frustrating to get a green light on any road whatsoever that will lead us down a path to have a stadium.”

In conclusion, Garber made a joke about the raccoon which has been spotted roaming the RFK corridors over the past couple years, which while funny, is kind of like the salty icing on a big cake of disappointment.