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Arsenal announced as 2016 MLS All-Star Game opponents in San Jose

By on February 11, 2016

The 2001 MLS All-Star Game was the last All-Star game held in the Bay Area. That match featured East versus West at Spartan Stadium, the San Jose Earthquakes’ home from 1996 to 2005. MLS Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott, the league’s first employee, remembers the match and joined representatives from the Earthquakes, Major League Soccer, and Arsenal to announce that the 2016 MLS All-Star Game will be held on July 28th, fifteen years to the day after the 2001 edition.

This time around, the All-Stars will be facing Arsenal at the Quakes’ Avaya Stadium. “We built Avaya for events like this,” said Quakes president Dave Kaval. “We did some of the greatest events in the 80s and 90s and this builds on that tradition.”

San Jose will also host the Chipotle Homegrown Game as a part of a week-long festival leading up to the All-Star Game. “We’re going to take downtown San Jose and almost create a mini Super Bowl City,” said Kaval. San Jose season ticket holders will have first access to the event tickets, which will be in hot demand given there are no current plans to expand Avaya’s 18,000 capacity for the match.

Arsenal will also visit Los Angeles for a pre-season friendly with Chivas US on their first visit to the West Coast, which has been a long time in the making. The Gunners first visited the US in 1989 to play a pre-season friendly match in Miami and more recently faced the New York Red Bulls in New York. A few years back, Earthquakes president Dave Kaval and General Manager John Doyle flew to London to pitch Avaya as a potential host for an Arsenal summer tour and things finally gained speed last summer when MLS announced that the All-Star Game will be hosted at Avaya.

“As soon as we put it out internally that we’re coming to California, there were lots of hands that went up to come on the trip,” laughed Arsenal Partnership Development Director Alex Wicks.


Although this will be there first visit to the West Coast, Arsenal have deep connections within American soccer. Their majority shareholder Stan Kroenke also owns the Colorado Rapids, who hosted the 2015 All-Star match against Tottenham Hotspur, and ’04 Invincibles squad members Theirry Henry and Freddie Ljungberg have both played in the US.

“I was lucky enough to be the captain of the MLS stars when I was here, and that doesn’t really exist in Europe so I did’nt know what to expect,” said Ljungberg, who, in his role as an Arsenal ambassador, was on hand at the announcement. “I wish we could have played Arsenal a bit earlier so I could have played!”

The Swede currently coaches the Arsenal Under-15 side and is raising a young family across the pond.

As per tradition, the Quakes’ coach Dominic Kinnear, who flew out from the club’s preseason camp in Arizona for the announcement, will be coaching the All-Star team and Abbott joked that Kinnear had revealed the secret to winning the match earlier — taking the team out to all the wineries in Sonoma Valley the day before the match and letting them tour the tasting rooms.

Avaya hosted Manchester United, Club America, and the US Women’s national team last summer and it might also host a national team during the Copa America this summer.

“The secret to all this is simple,” joked San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo. “I know because this stadium sells out all the time and every time I’m at a game I look around and see a lot empty seats even though it’s sold out and we kept wondering what was going on. So we hired some [scientists] to conduct some studies on where all these people were going, and what we figured out was that with North America’s largest outdoor bar here, the highest density of people in the entire state is right around this bar here during Quakes games. That’s the secret to all our success and we want to continue to attract amazing events.”

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.