San Jose’s Kei Kamara, right, who scored two goals, takes issue with a play by Columbus’ Andy Iro.
Professional soccer has a place in San Luis Obispo. It might only be a vacation house, a fixer-upper with some leaks and rusty east side, but it’s a home nonetheless.
Major League Soccer returned to the Central Coast on Friday with the San Jose Earthquakes beating the Columbus Crew 2-1 before 3,861 weather-tested fans in Alex G. Spanos Stadium.
The MLS visit wraps up Sunday when the Earthquakes play D.C. United.
Friday’s exhibition marked the first time a professional squad has played here since June 2001, when the old version of the Earthquakes faced the semiprofessional Central Coast Roadrunners. The Earthquakes won that meeting 6-0 before 1,700 fans at Arroyo Grande High.
Both the Roadrunners and Earthquakes, however, left their respective towns within the next four years.
The Roadrunners left San Luis Obispo County in 2003 after struggling to secure a permanent facility over their seven seasons.
The Earthquakes skipped out of San Jose a couple years later, moving to Houston and becoming the Dynamo in 2005 after failing to find a home of their own.
San Luis Obispo went 6 1/2 years without professional or semipro soccer until this week when the upstart San Jose Earthquakes franchise came to town for the “Central Coast Showcase.”
The Earthquakes even set aside some time to scrimmage the Cal Poly men’s soccer team Wednesday, scraping out a 1-0 victory thanks to Takayuki Suzuki’s goal in the 56th minute.
The kicker for local soccer fans, however, was that the exhibition was closed to the general public because of NCAA rules.
So San Luis Obispo’s soccer community, made up largely of a youth soccer contingent, had to wait until Friday to get its futbol fix.
The crowd was on its feet by the 17th minute when Kei Kamara split two defenders and deposited a perfectly placed ball in the back of the net. Kamara, a former Columbus forward, also netted the game winner off a Gavin Glinton assist in the 34th minute.
“It was a good night,” Glinton said. “I thought the crowd was raucous, pretty loud and into it. It felt like a lot more than a preseason match out there.”
Former UC Santa Barbara standouts Greg Curry and Andy Iro were the few players with local ties, having played at Cal Poly multiple times in their collegiate career. The Gauchos’ last trip to Spanos Stadium resulted in one of Cal Poly’s biggest wins in program history, a 2-1 upset over the 15th-ranked Gauchos before a record crowd of 7,143 fans.
Mother Nature kept Spanos from filling up to that degree Friday, but the 3,861 fans wasn’t a bad number considering the Earthquakes drew 4,113 fans for their previous exhibition against the Dynamo in San Francisco. That number was twice the attendance of the Earthquakes-Roadrunners match in 2001 at Doug Hitchen Field, but nowhere near the 7,000 that watched the Roadrunners take on the San Jose Clash at Mustang Stadium (now Spanos Stadium) on July 27, 1997. The Roadrunners also played the Clash there in 1998 (losing 2-0 before 2,315 fans) and the Los Angeles Galaxy in 1999 (losing 8-1 before 2,200 fans).
The local support proves that the Central Coast still loves soccer at the professional level and that there could be a market for another semipro squad in the county.
“If the San Jose team comes down here and draws 4,000 fans on a night like tonight, it’s evident a team from San Luis Obispo is going to draw a lot of fans,” said Iro, a Columbus defender. “(Cal Poly) drew 7,000 when we played here and 8,000 down at UCSB, so there’s definitely fans who want to watch soccer here.”
The catch being that new franchise would have to find a home and have plenty of financial backing.
“The Central Coast would be a great spot for a (semipro) team,” said Curry, a defender for San Jose who is out with an ankle injury. “The problem has always been money and stuff like that. There’s tons of people that would watch it here and there would definitely be a lot of good players with all of the colleges around here.”
Spanos Stadium would also be a nice place to call home, but like most of the houses in this area, it comes with a hefty price tag. It costs thousands to run an independent event at Spanos Stadium and that’s likely to be too much dough and too much maintenance for a semipro team to host games there full-time.
The semipro season also runs through the summer, which would tear up the field just in time for the Cal Poly football and soccer seasons. School officials say the turf in its current state, and the poor drainage system, probably couldn’t handle the summer-league wear and tear until the second phase of the stadium renovation is completed. And who knows when that’ll be.
So for now, those who hunger pro soccer will have to settle for exhibitions like this weekend’s friendlies.
After Sunday, it might be awhile before professional soccer in any form makes a home in San Luis Obispo again.
Brian Milne covers college sports for The Tribune. Contact him at bmilne@thetribunenews.com .
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