MLS Commissioner Don Garber

If you own a baseball or football team, getting the attention of your local D.C. legislators isn’t particularly hard. If you own a soccer team, well, good luck with that.

Potomac Soccer Wire reports today on comments made by Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber in which he fesses up that working with the District on finding D.C. United a new home hasn’t been easy, nor has the process been made any more pleasant by the spate of scandals that have hit the city’s government in the last year:

“[United president] Kevin Payne is working hard to try to find a solution there. It is very frustrating,” said the commissioner. “I think he’s beginning to make some progress with the city council and with the mayor. If you guys follow local politics there, there’s been all sorts of challenges with local politicians who no longer will be free men, and that just makes the dynamic of negotiating that much more difficult.”

Garber has made similar comments in the past, speaking in November of the frustration faced by the team and league in dealing with a city that doesn’t really want to do much to help them remain. (On November 3, Mayor Vince Gray tweeted, “We value DC United & hope they stay in DC. But District is in a challenging fiscal environment now & publicly funded stadium not possible.”)

As the team remains in limbo with the District over whether it will remain or not, it has openly considered decamping for Baltimore or even College Park. The team and many of its supporters want a new stadium built at Buzzard Point in Southwest. In December, the D.C. Council passed a “Sense of the Council” resolution expressing the legislature’s support for the team, but symbolic support is all that the team might be getting from the city for a while.

If Garber could only pretend to be Dan Snyder asking for a training facility in the District, he might get a response much more quickly.