San Jose Earthquakes - last updated on 23 February 2008
(Courtesy of Johnny Beaufays)
Club name: San Jose Earthquakes
Foundation: 1995
City: San Jose, California
Colours: Black, white and blue
Website: www.sjearthquakes.com
Honours:
MLS Cup - 2 (2001, 2003)
MLS Supporters' Shield - 1 (2005)
Carolina Challenge Cup - 1 (2005)
A bit of history:
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 former 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.
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 and accept a buyout from the league, leaving the franchise league-owned for several years. 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.
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.
The franchise's official name changed from Clash to Earthquakes on October 27, 1999.
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 arch rival 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 former 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, General Manager Johnny Moore, whose roots with the club dated back to his days as a player for the NASL Earthquakes, resigned after AEG and MLS considered allowing the team to be rebranded as "San Jose America" (with ownership to transfer to the owners of Mexico's Club America). Earthquake fans were similarly outraged at the proposed rebranding, coming just months after the MLS Cup. 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 while Lalas traded away his rights, thus allowing Lalas' former team, the Galaxy, to acquire him.
On the field, Kinnear led the team to two more playoff appearances, including a MLS Supporters' Shield win in 2005.
The 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 franchise was renamed to Houston 1836, then to
Houston Dynamo. However, MLS Commissioner Don Garber 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.
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.
In September 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 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.
In October 2007 the Earthquakes announced they would be moving their offices from the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose to an office park across the street from their temporary home, Buck Shaw Stadium, and across the Caltrain tracks from the location of the FMC site.
On November 6, 2007, the team announced that former Earthquakes coach Frank Yallop was returning to the team as head coach. According to ESPN.com, the Earthquakes compensated Yallop's previous employer, the Los Angeles Galaxy, with a third-round pick in the 2008 MLS SuperDraft.
Club crests: (roll on the crest to get more informations)
San Jose Earthquakes -
Founded in 1995 as San Jose Clash
