When the 2016 AT&T MLS All-Star Game kicks off on Thursday, June 28 at Avaya Stadium (7:30 pm ET, ESPN, UniMás, TSN), the world will bear witness as many of the top names in international soccer face off when the MLS All-Stars meet Premier League side Arsenal.
The 2015 opening of the venue, the shiny home of the San Jose Earthquakes, represented a high-water mark for soccer in the Bay Area. But unbeknownst to many followers of the beautiful game, the history of the pro game in San Jose stretches back much further — about four decades.
A sleepy city an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, San Jose in the early 1970s boasted roots in agriculture, not in soccer culture. But that would all change in 1974 when Milan Mandaric, a technology pioneer in the days before Silicon Valley, purchased a franchise in the first iteration of the NASL. He announced they would play in his adopted hometown — and thus, the team that would become today’s San Jose Earthquakes was born.
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