San Jose vs. DC United: Full-circle moment awaits MLS originals | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

From 10 teams to 30. From 18 roster slots per squad to 30, plus second teams and an array of academy sides. From playing in an assortment of NFL and college football venues to a large and growing fleet of modern stadia designed with soccer in mind. A season that at first ran from April to September with a few weeks of playoffs now kicks off in February and stretches to December.

A fragile, nervous start-up simply seeking survival has matured into a hale, healthy adult eyeing a place among the global elite.

So much has changed about MLS in the 29 years since the San Jose Clash – who nowadays go by the Earthquakes – and D.C. United faced off in the league’s inaugural match on April 6, 1996, a landmark occasion the two clubs will commemorate with a Matchday 7 meeting at PayPal Park on Sunday afternoon (5 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

“It was an incredible journey – left an indelible mark on me, not just as a player, but as a person,” John Harkes, D.C.’s captain that day, told MLSsoccer.com this week. “Grateful to be part of that, and a small part in growing the game in our country.

“It was hard, it was difficult, but we enjoyed it. We enjoyed the tough times, and that's what, I think, made not just our team, our club, but also the league. I think everybody endured those difficult times,” he added. “With the national team at that time, we were able to come off the ‘94 World Cup, first time hosting our country, and then two years later have a brand-new pro league. A lot of people doubted us, and we were able to pull that off.”

Déjà vu

Remarkably, despite the three decades between these games, a couple of common threads run through them. Starting with the fact that Bruce Arena will be roaming the touchlines both then and now, and a Harkes will likely be on the pitch.

Arena led D.C. on that momentous day at San Jose State University’s Spartan Stadium, the first of more than 800 matches as an MLS and US men’s national team head coach, a track record he’s still building upon as the first-year boss of the Earthquakes. At age 73, he’s more than 10 years older than the league’s next-oldest coach, Seattle’s Brian Schmetzer, and he shows little desire to stop any time soon – “this is what I do,” he said at his Quakes unveiling – as he looks to add to his five MLS Cup titles, four Supporters' Shields, a Concacaf Champions Cup, a US Open Cup and four MLS Coach of the Year awards, among myriad other honors in his illustrious career.

And one of the key midfielders in Arena’s San Jose side is Ian Harkes, John’s son, a child of MLS in so many ways. Born almost exactly one year before that first opening day in ‘96, Ian grew up in the new soccer landscape that his father was helping construct, becoming a D.C. homegrown and eventually winning the trust of Arena just as his dad did, first at the New England Revolution and now with the Quakes.

“Well, I feel old, so I'm sorry if I'm making you guys feel old,” Ian told MLSsoccer.com with a laugh in a recent phone conversation about Sunday’s occasion.

Playing the long game

As it turns out, the coach had his eye on John’s kid long before he officially joined one of his teams. Arena invited Ian to train informally with his excellent 2013-14 Galaxy sides during his college days at Wake Forest – “it was a tremendous experience,” said Ian, “and for him to open up an opportunity like that for me was really meaningful” – then tracked his progress during a successful stint in Scotland at Dundee United.

“He's done it better than anyone that I know in the US, without a doubt,” said John Harkes of Arena, who also coached him at the University of Virginia. “We're talking about the best coach in the US, for years – even in the UVA days, winning titles there and going with the Olympic team and helping with the US. And still, people in our country hardly even recognize that.

“So we're still building. We are always going to be building. And Bruce was one of the first guys that took on the responsibility of building the game in this country, and actually, I attached to that as a player,” he added, describing the myriad clinics and community events United players and staff would attend as part of MLS’s efforts to introduce themselves to the public.

Across the decades, Arena tends to inspire trust and passionate devotion among his players, including both generations of Harkes.

“He's a very loyal guy,” explained Ian. “He gives you that freedom as a player to go and make the game and make the right decisions… He doesn't want robotic players. He wants guys to feel the game and give them, obviously, critiques when they're not doing what they need to. But he's really a guy that's like, ‘step up and show me.’ So I think I really appreciate that, and players really appreciate that, that they are given the opportunity to go and show what makes them special.”

That proved a key ingredient in D.C.’s debut season. Having played in two World Cups and broken new ground as the first Yank to play in the English Premier League, John Harkes returned home with his USMNT brethren to help launch this new league, part of the legacy of the 1994 World Cup on US soil. Building the proverbial plane in flight was no simple task, though.

He arrived at D.C. fresh off a stint at West Ham United, and that combined with an injury issue limited him to only 10 days or so of training before the inaugural match. United fell 1-0 to the Clash thanks to a late golazo from USMNT striker Eric Wynalda – prompting palpable relief among executives keen to avoid a dreaded goalless draw – amid a scrappy overall vibe in the tight confines of Spartan’s infamously narrow field.

“I remember that there was no tempo and flow. It was hard to really set the pace. Everybody was high energy, aggressive and just trying to compete coming out of the gate,” said John. “I remember that San Jose, guys that I had played with on the World Cup team, they wouldn't even look at us in the tunnel. It was interesting. It was just that focus they were trying to bring to come out of the gate and beat us on the first day.

“We competed well, it just wasn't a lot of great soccer being played, to be honest with you. It was hard to establish that. That was going to take time over the next six to eight, maybe 10 games, for us to come together and really have a great group that understood how to play and keep the ball and have some possession. There was no real defined style of play in Major League Soccer. We had to do it.”

Arena has spoken even more bluntly about that match’s aesthetics: “That remains one of the worst games ever played in MLS,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2015. But it was all part of the journey.

Despite struggling through the season’s opening months, Arena’s D.C. would round into fine form and eventually win the first MLS Cup, rallying memorably from a 2-0 deficit to defeat the LA Galaxy 3-2 on a cold, rain-soaked evening at the old Foxboro Stadium. Scan through the photos from that night, and you’ll spot a very young Ian gazing at the trophy as John cradled it, him and his sister Lauren in his arms.

That D.C. squad would flower into MLS’s first – and to some old-timers, still its greatest – dynasty, winning three of the league’s first four championships, an Open Cup and a Concacaf Champions Cup while playing some gorgeous attacking soccer in front of spirited fans who set the early standard for MLS supporter culture at RFK Stadium. It’s a legacy Ian carries with pride.

“I remember him just talking about the big personalities and some of the great players that they had,” recalled the younger Harkes. “There's a lot of stories shared and passed from the locker room, and then it was fun for me to actually go and live that out too, because I would go to games when I was a young kid and go into the locker room afterward with him and joke around with guys like Benny Olsen, [who] eventually became my coach.

“It was an incredible journey for me, getting to play for the academy, but also just growing up with RFK 25 minutes away from me. It was a really special place,” he added. “My first year [in MLS] was RFK’s last year, so it was kind of nostalgic for me and my family, obviously, just getting to see the banners every day, and see all the legends like Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno, my dad, Eddie Pope – all these guys, there are so many different big players that have started and had so much influence on American soccer that started in the D.C. area.”

The new regime

Now he’s part of a different sort of project in San Jose, where the Quakes’ glory years at the turn of the century are faded memories amid the past decade-plus of hardship. After last season’s Wooden Spoon finish, their first few weeks of 2025 have been promising, if imperfect, and many across MLS are watching closely to see if the old Arena magic still works.

“You can kind of feel the Bruce effect, if you want to call it that,” said Ian, one of several arrivals from the coach’s last stop in New England. “Wherever he goes, he has a certain blueprint and I think he wanted to put that into effect right away with San Jose. The word ‘project’ is probably accurate, because everyone has come out here, we've added a lot of players, and there's already a lot of talented players in San Jose.

“I think it was just him coming in and offering his ideas and tightening the ship a little bit, and we're still drip-feeding those in every week, in terms of what he wants from us. I think we started really well, which got everyone bought in. It's always easier with wins… There's so much talent on the team, and I think under Bruce, he can unlock that potential.”

John and his wife Cindi will be in the crowd at PayPal on Sunday – both to celebrate MLS’s 30 seasons of life and also to cheer on Ian.

“I'm torn now emotionally, because I want to support my son, who’s playing for San Jose, the opposition,” John deadpanned. “I'm thinking about going out there in my retro D.C. United kit. My wife’s like, ‘oh, I don't know. You might get beat up.’”

Both father and son will surely take a moment or two to reflect on that sunny day at Spartan 29 years prior, and all that’s been built since. While Arena might not admit as much, he probably will, too.

“It is really special to have the crossovers there and both of us be involved,” said Ian. “It'll be an exciting occasion, for sure, and everyone will be up for it, and just what it will mean to this community.”