It didn’t take long for San Diego’s de facto futbol team to draw first blood against the team from Canada Wednesday evening at Torero Stadium on the campus of the University of San Diego.
What will take longer, however, is determining if San Diego is a soccer-obsessed metropolis as real estate developers and rabid soccer fans would have you believe, or if — as their equally ambitious land developing colleagues and their San Diego State University-loving boosters counter — San Diego is as soccer as Cardi B is country.
When the Xolos’ Miller Bolanos punished Toronto FC for losing possession of the ball in its own half by scoring within three minutes of the game’s start, there were so few people in the stands it sounded more like cheering from a mime convention than a roar of approval by ravenous soccer fans.
Yes, I know the match was only a meaningless friendly between the equivalent of Tijuana’s junior varsity team and a Major League Soccer champion which is less than three weeks into pre-season training.
And, yes, I know that although the Xolos draw thousands of San Diegans from Chula Vista, National City and the rest of the county to their games at Caliente Stadium they are nonetheless the team from Tijuana. The level of civic pride in a Mexican team is not without limits on this side of the border.
And, yes, I am aware that by the time the game was coming to an exciting conclusion around 8:30 p.m. there were enough people watching that the atmosphere was akin to a summer time barbecue at an Irish family reunion.
But if a city desperately hungry for a professional soccer team of its own can’t fill a 6,000-seat stadium I have to wonder aloud if it genuinely deserves one.
I’m not suggesting that efforts to build a soccer stadium in Mission Valley should be abandoned in favor of building a college football stadium instead.
But I do bristle each time I hear soccer fans, MLS boosters, and developers say San Diego deserves a top tier professional soccer team.
If San Diegans turned out en masse every time a national, pro or semi-pro soccer game was played then I’d say we deserve one.
If getting a ticket to a meaningless friendly between representatives of two countries’ professional soccer leagues was harder than getting tickets to “Hamilton” at the Civic
Theater, then I’d agree San Diegans deserve their own MLS franchise and accompanying stadium (or vice versa).
But based on the moderate turnout at the game Wednesday night I’d say futbol fans in this county have a lot more work to do before they can reasonably expect to have a team to call their own. For now they’ll have to put in the work crossing the border to watch their home team play in another country.
