San Diego soccer city? It’s a question I’m not sure how to answer. Certainly there is, and has been for a decade or so, a surging interest in jogo bonito — the Brazilian way of referring to the beautiful game which is another way of saying futbol. (Soccer for those of you so inclined.)
There are more youth and adult leagues now than when I was growing up 10-plus World Cups ago. San Diego television ratings for futbol events, i.e., the World Cup (men’s or women’s), EuroCup or anything involving the U.S. or Mexican men’s national soccer teams in non-friendly matches are impressive. Viewership for regular league games in England and Mexico is admirable. And every other weekend throughout the year thousands of people cross the border from San Diego to Tijuana to watch the Xolos play at Estadio Caliente.
No doubt San Diegans are smitten with the game. They may even have a serious crush on it. But do they love it? Do they adore it the way Chicagoans love baseball? The way Pittsburgh loves its Steelers? Looking around the stands at an Albion Pros game, one of five bottom-tier semi-professional soccer teams in the county, the answer you’d reach is probably not. Sometimes there is so much space between fans at games you’d think they were eating a steady diet of garlic pickles topped with onions.
If the tens of thousands of people who signed a petition to put the question of building a Major League Soccer stadium on the ballot were soccer fans interested in watching futbol live then the majority of them must have lost their way driving to the high schools were Albion Pros, Chula Vista FC, SoCal Surf, San Diego Sea Lions and San Diego Zest F.C. play. They sure as heck are not filling the stands.
While their argument might be that the difference between an MLS soccer team and a Division 4 soccer team is the difference between a high school musical and a Broadway show my first response would be “Duh” and my second would be “So what? So are ticket prices.”
But I get it. I get that some people only want to see a top-tier team play in a top-tier league. Money and time are not spent lightly by many.
But when the investment and development group as well as supporters of an MLS stadium in Mission Valley try to portray San Diego as a soccer city, a metropolis whose residents deserve a professional soccer league and a stadium, I cringe.
In my mind you deserve something when you work for it. Maybe the labor and devotion come over a long period of time. Maybe it spans just a year. But the point is you put in time.
Given the sparse attendance at some of these homegrown semi-pro futbol games over the last season and a half, I don’t know that San Diego, the city or the county, is a soccer town. A soccer city. I’d like it to be. I’d like to sit next to thousands of fans of jogo bonito, be it in a developer’s high-priced stadium or a high school’s humble concrete stands.
