When the San Jose Earthquakes play the visiting D.C. United on Sunday, MLS will celebrate its 30th season with the exact matchup that launched the league in 1996.
The league has substantially changed over the last thirty years, however. Not only will Bruce Arena be standing on the San Jose touchline instead of D.C. United—the club he coached in 1996—but the league also finds itself as an established entity within global sports.
Eric Wynalda scored the lone goal on April 6, 1996, for the San Jose Clash to beat D.C. United that day, kicking off an early and wild era for professional first-division soccer in the United States.
While pro soccer existed before in the United States, MLS has been the first to truly make inroads to the marketplace and establish itself, unlike the past eras of the North American Soccer League and others.
But it wasn’t always so clean—let’s examine some of the wacky aspects of the early MLS seasons.
