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San Jose Earthquakes

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Template:MLS team

This article is about the MLS franchise. For the NASL/MISL/WSA club, see San Jose Earthquakes (NASL).

The San Jose Earthquakes, a professional soccer team located in San Jose, California, participated in Major League Soccer (MLS) from 1995 to 2005 and will resume play in 2008.[1] It was one of the original ten teams in the league, known as the San Jose Clash from 1995 to 1999. The Earthquakes defeated D.C. United 1-0 in the first game in MLS history. It is one of three teams from the State of California to play in the league.

The team won the MLS Cup in 2001 and 2003, as well as the MLS Supporters' Shield in 2005. Following the 2005 MLS season in December of that year, the franchise was put on hiatus. The players and coaching staff moved to Houston, Texas where they play as the Houston Dynamo. On July 18 2007 it was announced that the San Jose Earthquakes will resume play starting in the 2008 season.[2]

History

Roots of the Earthquakes

For more information see San Jose Earthquakes (NASL team) and San Francisco Bay Blackhawks
The franchise's roots trace back to 1974, when the North American Soccer League (NASL) awarded an expansion franchise to San Jose, named the Earthquakes. The NASL folded after the 1984 season, and the Earthquakes played in the Western Soccer League (WSL) from 1985-88, under the ownership of Peter Bridgwater.

In 1988, Bridgewater sold the team. When the new owner ran the team into the ground, leading to its folding later that year, the WSL awarded a franchise to Dan Van Voorhis, a local real estate lawyer. Van Voorhis named his new team the Blackhawks, after a real estate development of his. The San Francisco Bay Blackhawks entered the WSL for the 1989 season. In 1991, Van Voorhis hired a fomer Earthquakes' player, Laurie Calloway, as coach. Calloway coached a team full of players that would later play for San Jose in MLS, including John Doyle, Troy Dayak, Paul Bravo and Eric Wynalda. In a preview of what was to come later in MLS, bitter disagreements between Calloway and Wynalda led to Calloway kicking Wynalda off the team in 1992. Blackhawks owner Dan Van Voorhis later pulled his team out of the WSL's successor league, the American Professional Soccer League, after which they played as the San Jose Hawks in the USISL in 1993. The team folded at the end of the 1993 season.

Major League Soccer

In 1995, Van Voorhis successfully led a San Jose bidding group which was awarded one of Major League Soccer's inaugural teams. At that time, he handed over all existing Hawks player contracts, front-office resources and the rights to play in Spartan Stadium to MLS in exchange for Type C stock in the league. He also became the franchise's investor/operator until outside concerns forced him to divest himself of these positions prior to the league's launch. Meanwhile, a direct connection to the earlier Earthquakes came in the person of Peter Bridgwater, named as General Manager of the MLS team. Although Bridgwater, at the time, still owned the rights to the Earthquakes' name and logo, the team became known as the Clash at the urging of Nike, a major investor in MLS.

On December 7 1995, Bridgwater hired Calloway as the team's first coach, providing a second direct connection with the NASL Earthquakes, as well as a connection with the Blackhawks. Ignoring the past history between Calloway and Wynalda with the Blackhawks, the team acquired Wynalda just over a month later, on January 23 1996. The Clash's connections to the Blackhawks continued when the Clash made the first trade in MLS history, sending Rhett Harty to the MetroStars for Troy Dayak, both players having spent several years with the team. Despite the presence of Calloway and much of his former team, the Clash failed to achieve the dominance achieved by the Blackhawks.

Wynalda scored the first goal in MLS history. However, he and Calloway were soon at each other's throats. The tensions on the team led eventually led to a locker room brawl between Wynalda and John Doyle. On top of that was an infamous incident in which Wynalda hired an aircraft towing a banner demanding the Clash fire Calloway.[3]

Although the Clash made the postseason in the inaugural 1996 MLS season, and Doyle earned recognition as the best MLS defender, the team floundered in 1997. By the middle of the 1997 season, the team was sinking fast and Bridgwater fired Calloway, to be replaced by Brian Quinn. The Clash finished 1997 with a 12-20 and at the bottom of the Western Conference standings. In 1998 things got no better as the team finished 13-19 and well out of playoff contention. During the 1999 pre-season, the saga of player-coach antagonism continued when Richard Gough left the team after an argument with Quinn. By the end of 1999, Quinn was done and the team released him to hire Lothar Osiander.

Return of the Earthquakes name

The franchise's official name changed from Clash to Earthquakes on October 27, 1999.

San Jose Earthquakes players, 2005

After missing four consecutive post-seasons with three different coaches, the Earthquakes hired head coach Frank Yallop days before the 2001 MLS SuperDraft. Yallop's personnel changes and deft coaching with the help of assistant coach Dominic Kinnear and goalkeeper coach Tim Hanley, along with the allocation of star forward Landon Donovan on loan from Bayer Leverkusen, quickly turned around the Earthquakes' on-field fortunes, spurring the biggest regular season turnaround in league history (from 29 points in 2000 to 45 points in 2001) and leading the team to a 2-1 MLS Cup 2001 overtime victory over the archrival Los Angeles Galaxy.

The Quakes followed with two consecutive runners-up finishes for the MLS Supporters' Shield and a 4-2 MLS Cup 2003 win over the Chicago Fire. Prior to reaching the 2003 final, the Earthquakes had rallied from four goals down to beat the Galaxy, 5-4 on aggregate, in a first-round playoff that many MLS observers described as the greatest in MLS history. Following the season, Yallop returned to his native Canada to coach the Canadian men's national soccer team. Assistant coach Kinnear was then promoted as the team's next head coach, and fomer San Jose player John Doyle was named as his assistant.

Having won two MLS Cup titles in three years, the Earthquakes were poised for greater success both on and off the field. However, in January 2004, rumors surfaced that the club might be sold to the owners of Mexico City's Club America (and potentially renamed "America San Jose" or "America USA"). This led to the resignation of the club's General Manager, Johnny Moore, whose roots with the club dated back to his days as a player for the NASL Earthquakes. Former Los Angeles Galaxy defender Alexi Lalas was named as his replacement. Under Lalas' management, the club planned a move to Houston. Meanwhile, when the Quakes' star player, Landon Donovan, played briefly in Germany, Lalas traded away his rights, thus allowing Lalas' former team, the Galaxy, to acquire him.

On the field, new coach Dominic Kinner led the team to two more playoff appearances, including a MLS Supporters' Shield win in 2005.

Move to Houston

The last owner of the San Jose Earthquakes, Anschutz Entertainment Group, announced on December 15 2005 that the team was moving to Houston for the 2006 season due to the failure of securing a new soccer-specific stadium for the team in San Jose. The team was renamed the Houston Dynamo. However, MLS Commissioner Don Garber has said that the Earthquakes' name, colors, logo, wordmark, history and competitive records would not be transferred, similarly to the Cleveland Browns deal in the National Football League. The Houston Dynamo is technically considered an expansion team by MLS just as the Baltimore Ravens is by the NFL.

Rebirth

On May 24, 2006, an agreement was reached between Major League Soccer and the principal owners of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. Lewis Wolff and John Fisher have a three year exclusive option to develop a soccer-specific stadium and bring an expansion franchise to the San Francisco Bay Area.[1] The location of the stadium has yet to be determined, but the offices for the effort (set up as Earthquakes Soccer, LLC) opened to the public on November 8 2006 in the Fairmont San Jose Hotel and are headed by former A's vice president of sales and marketing David Alioto.[2]

In September of 2006, after nearly nine months of inactivity (displaying only Commissioner Garber's December 2005 letter of condolence to Earthquakes fans over the team's relocation), the team's website was finally revived to display updates on the progress of starting up the expansion San Jose Earthquakes franchise and to allow fans to sign up for the Earthquakes Soccer, LLC e-newsletter.

On July 18, 2007, Commissioner Don Garber announced, at his annual state of the league address, that the San Jose Earthquakes will resume play starting in the 2008 season after Lew Wolff exercised his option to purchase the new expansion team. The expansion team however retains all records, logos, colors and titles of the 1996-2005 franchise and is in essence a continuation of that franchise, while functionally being the 14th franchise to join MLS.

New stadium

On January 13, 2007, the San Jose Mercury News reported that the City of San Jose, San Jose State University and the Earthquakes owners were in negotiations to build a 22,000 permanent seat (with the option to increase the total capacity to 30,000 seats for any given game) soccer/football stadium just east of the Earthquakes previous home of Spartan Stadium. The new facility would be privately built by Lewis Wolff and John Fisher, the primary owners of the Earthquakes, with San Jose State providing the needed land. Additionally, the team and the university would build community soccer fields across Senter Road in Kelley Park using still-unspent City of San Jose bond money approved years earlier for such community soccer fields.[3] The plan was for the new version of the San Jose Earthquakes to play in Spartan Stadium during the 2008 MLS season, then to move into the new stadium in 2009. Plans for the stadium collapsed on April 19 of that year after the Earthquakes and SJSU could not come to an agreement on revenue sharing for the stadium.

On May 8, the City of San Jose and Earthquakes Soccer, LLC confirmed that their new primary focus was on a site near San Jose International Airport on the site of the former FMC plant. The new site is owned by the City of San Jose, which is exploring either leasing it to Earthquakes Soccer, LLC or selling it outright. The 75 acre site is adjacent to not only the airport but the planned BART extension to Santa Clara and the existing Santa Clara Caltrain station in addition to being in proximity to both Interstate 880 and US Highway 101. On June 12 2007, the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding to explore construction of a new stadium to bring MLS back to San Jose and adopted a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an Exclusive Right to Negotiate agreement with Wolff and his partners regarding the potential development of the FMC site. The preliminary designs have yet to be released to the public.

Until the completion of a new soccer specific stadium, which may be as early as the 2010 season, the team will play its home games at one or two venues around the Bay Area.[4] Reports originally stated that games expected to attract large crowds, such as those against the Los Angeles Galaxy, would be played at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland or Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto.[5] Smaller attendance games are likely to be played at either Buck Shaw Stadium in Santa Clara or PAL Stadium in San Jose.[6] The final choices were Buck Shaw Stadium for small games and the Oakland Coliseum for larger games.

Honors

Notable players

San Jose Earthquakes Hall of Fame

Head coaches

Roster

For list of each season's roster see: San Jose Earthquakes Rosters.

Team records

Home stadiums

General Managers

Ownership

Mascots

Year-by-year

Year Reg. Season Playoffs Open Cup CONCACAF
Champions' Cup 		SuperLiga
San Jose Clash
1996 4th, West Quarterfinals Did not enter Not qualified n/a
1997 5th, West Did not qualify Quarterfinals Did not qualify n/a
1998 5th, West Did not qualify Quarterfinals Did not qualify n/a
1999 5th, West Did not qualify Did not enter Did not qualify n/a
San Jose Earthquakes
2000 4th, West Did not qualify Quarterfinals Did not qualify n/a
2001 2nd, West Champions Quarterfinals Not held n/a
2002 2nd, West Quarterfinals Quarterfinals Quarterfinals n/a
2003 1st, West Champions Round of 16 First Round n/a
2004 4th, West Quarterfinals Semifinals Quarterfinals n/a
2005 1st, West* Quarterfinals Quarterfinals Did not qualify n/a
2006 On Hiatus
2007 On Hiatus
2008 TBD TBD TBD Not qualified Not qualified

* Won MLS Supporters' Shield

International competition

Average attendance

regular season / playoffs

  • 1996: 17,232 / 17,209
  • 1997: 13,597 / missed playoffs
  • 1998: 13,653 / missed playoffs
  • 1999: 14,959 / missed playoffs
  • 2000: 12,460 / missed playoffs
  • 2001: 9,635 / 13,269
  • 2002: 11,150 / 8,069
  • 2003: 10,465 / 15,127
  • 2004: 13,001 / 8,659
  • 2005: 13,037 / 17,824
  • 2006: On hiatus
  • 2007: On hiatus
  • All-Time: 13,022 / 13,569
Wikimedia Commons has media related to San Jose Earthquakes.

Notes

  1. ^ http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/jonah_freedman/07/17/quakes.return/index.html
  2. ^ http://web.mlsnet.com/news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20070718&content_id=106314&vkey=pr_mls&fext=.jsp MLS Press Release
  3. ^ http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/mls/news/2001/03/21/quakes_due_sa/
  4. ^ http://web.mlsnet.com/t110/faq.jsp
  5. ^ Jonah Freedman (July 17, 2007). "Aftershock alert! Quakes are back — and here's what it means for MLS". SI.com. Retrieved 2007-07-18.
  6. ^ http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_6402405
  7. ^ http://www.mlsnet.com//news/mls_news.jsp?ymd=20071003&content_id=121203&vkey=news_mls&fext=.jsp
  8. ^ http://web.mlsnet.com/t110/news/article.jsp?content_id=10032007_jd


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