Monterey Bay F.C. has the players, the stadium and the look. In year two, the question is whether the fans will follow.

ON A COLD, MISTY NIGHT IN EARLY MARCH, THE RAIN IS HOLDING OFF JUST ENOUGH TO OFFER A BRIEF RESPITE FROM THE STORMS THAT HAVE BATTERED THE CENTRAL COAST ALL WINTER. Just off Highway 1, right on the border where Seaside meets Marina, several thousand people – young and old, college students and families, couples on dates and friends on group outings – have braved the chill and made it out to Cardinale Stadium, formerly Freeman Stadium, on the CSU Monterey Bay campus.

The occasion is the season opener for Monterey County’s newest and most significant pro sports team, Monterey Bay F.C. Last year was the first in the club’s existence after owner Ray Beshoff, an Irish-born California auto dealer with a passion for the game of soccer, moved his United Soccer League franchise from Fresno, struck an agreement with CSUMB and invested more than $12 million (with the help of co-investors like Taylor Farms founder Bruce Taylor) to transform the university’s dilapidated stadium into a 6,000-seat soccer-specific venue where people would pay to come watch his team play. With the move came an entirely new roster and a brand identity crafted specifically for the club’s new home – from a new name and crest, to a cyan-and-navy color scheme dubbed “Crisp and Kelp.”

The first season had its ups and downs. The stadium wasn’t ready until two months into the season, forcing a newly assembled group of players to play their first seven games on the road, losing all but one. A midseason surge was followed by a poor stretch late in the year, and the team missed out on the USL Championship playoffs. Monterey Bay F.C. averaged more than 3,600 in attendance across their 17 home games in 2022 – below the league average of around 5,000, but not bad for a team just establishing a footing in one of the smaller markets in the second tier of American pro soccer. For its 2023 opener against Hartford Athletic on March 11, the club reports 3,615 people in attendance.

Several minutes before kickoff, fans are still filing into a stadium that, with its freshly painted finishes and its pristine (albeit artificial) turf, draws a sleek contrast to the minor league baseball stadiums and college football fields where some USL teams play. Behind one of the goals, 1st Capital Bank has sponsored a covered VIP lounge equipped with its own bar, buffet and an up-close view of the action. (You’ll usually find Beshoff, with his conspicuous white mane, perched on the edge of the section, intently watching every kick of the ball.) Behind the other goal, bleachers house a dedicated supporters’ section where a growing number of diehard fans are unfurling banners and setting up with drums and horns.

And behind the supporters’ section, a large open-air pavilion houses an array of food and beverage vendors, virtually all of them local businesses: among them, Ivan’s Baked Potatoes, Tacos Don Beto and, largest of all, an Alvarado Street Brewery outpost featuring rows of biergarten-style benches that are still packed with people drinking and dining as kickoff approaches.

Those who are slow to get to their seats pay for their tardiness when, less than two minutes into the game, new signing Alex Dixon – a diminutive yet speedy attacker with over a decade of experience in the USL and other American soccer leagues – makes a run into the box, receives a square pass from teammate Sam Gleadle, takes a touch that ricochets off two Hartford defenders, regains control of the ball and jabs it past the goalkeeper with his right foot to give MBFC an early lead. The half-full stadium erupts, fans waving white “rally towels” handed out before the game in celebration.

It is the first of eight total goals scored on the night – the sort of prolific contest that would dispel soccer skeptics who have long discounted the sport as an uneventful, low-scoring game. Most importantly, Monterey Bay scores five of those goals, with Dixon netting three of them before halftime – the first “hat trick” in the club’s history – on the way to a 5-3 victory.

As far as good starts to a season go, it would be hard to top it: An entertaining blend of style and substance, of exciting soccer and results on the scoreboard, and the perfect advertisement for getting more fans across the region invested in the team and out to the stadium. Speaking to the Weekly a few weeks later, Beshoff insists that he leaves all matters of playing style and strategy to Monterey Bay’s veteran head coach and sporting director, Frank Yallop. He is very much focused, however, on the winning part – as he knows it is integral to ensuring that, now that he’s built the club, the people will follow.

“We can only survive if we get the fans – we can’t survive without them,” Beshoff says. “When we win a game and I see those fans there cheering and throwing [up] the towels, it’s an exhilarating feeling. And you walk out of there thinking, ‘They’re gonna come back.’”

A YEAR INTO THE MONTEREY BAY F.C. EXPERIMENT, Beshoff says he’s mostly pleased with how things have gone thus far: The roster, under Yallop’s leadership, has established continuity; the stadium is finally complete; and the club has developed a strong base of local sponsors including Taylor Farms, Montage Health, Cardinale Automotive and the Pebble Beach Company.

Beshoff is comfortable with the fact that, at this level, you don’t own a pro soccer team to make lots of money. In fact, “you know you’re going to lose money,” he notes. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be profitable; I think breaking even would be a goal.”

(He adds that owners like him have to hope that in the long term, their franchise’s appreciating value “keeps pace with the money that you lose… so maybe you can recuperate [losses] if you sell the team in 10 years’ time.”)

“I think my only disappointment,” Beshoff caveats, “is we’re not selling out every game.” The club has only broken 4,000 spectators at Cardinale Stadium on four occasions to date, with its highest turnout being the 5,705 who watched the 2022 home finale versus Tampa Bay last October. That disappointment is compounded by the fact that tickets are inexpensive by pro sports standards; the cheapest seats start at $20 per game, with season tickets costing as low as $272.

One week after the thrilling 2023 season opener versus Hartford, MBFC hosts defending Eastern Conference champions Louisville City. Once again, it is an unseasonably cold early spring night, and just over 3,000 people are officially in attendance to see the team fall to a 0-1 defeat. (A Monterey Bay F.C. spokesperson did not specify whether the club’s reported attendance accounts for the number of tickets sold or the actual number of spectators in the stadium. Some fans observed that the attendance for the Louisville City game felt lower than the 3,019 reported.)

But as the weather improves, the following home games see better showings. On April Fools’ Day, nearly 3,900 turn out for a heartbreaking, late 2-1 defeat to defending USL champions San Antonio. A passionate, engaged crowd provides the best atmosphere of the season so far, chanting their support for the team and voicing their displeasure with the opposition and referees alike when things don’t go Monterey Bay’s way. A week later, more than 3,500 are reported in the house for a 4-2 romp over New Mexico United.

With an eye toward increasing its local exposure, Monterey Bay F.C. announced a deal in early March with KION-TV that will see the local broadcaster air all of the team’s home games live on its family of stations. Games also air on the ESPN+ streaming service under the USL’s league-wide broadcast deal with the sports media giant.

“It was one of our goals all along to have a local linear broadcast partner,” according to team president Mike DiGiulio, a longtime business partner of Beshoff’s who now leads Monterey Bay F.C.’s front office. While Beshoff admits his own reservations that local TV airings may dissuade some fans from coming to the live matches, the club hopes they will help spread awareness of the team throughout the region.

And Monterey Bay does consider itself a regional concern; DiGiulio says the club defines its fan catchment area as stretching north into Santa Cruz County and east into San Benito County. Against San Antonio, MBFC debuts a new alternate “Light Fighter” jersey featuring a black design and a yellow crest – U.S. Army colors that it dubs a tribute to the 7th Infantry Division that once called Fort Ord home. Before the game, a black flag that reads “Defend the 831” in bold yellow print is raised up the stadium flagpole, and many fans are already adorning the new jerseys as well as black-and-yellow scarves bearing the slogan.

The club’s look, branded by British designer Christopher Payne, has proven a hit with fans. DiGiulio says merchandise sales have “matched our expectations, if not exceeded [them].” Oz Lucero, who leads MBFC supporters group Fuerza Union, recalls how he’s met people who bought the gear having not even known the team existed beforehand – drawn by both the design and a desire to represent their home region. “It’s a very proud area… We like to show off that we’re from around here,” he observes.

Indeed, MBFC has leaned into the idea of the team as a local unifier, adopting the moniker of “Union” – a common club identifier across the soccer world – as an alternative name signaling a link between the disparate communities of the Monterey Peninsula, the Salinas Valley, and the rest of the Central Coast region. (The club’s slogan – “The greatest union of land and sea” – speaks to that appeal, as represented in a promotional video it released ahead of its first season.)

“I think it’s something that we really needed in this area – something to unite the Salinas-Santa Cruz-Watsonville area with the Monterey and Carmel [area],” says MBFC midfielder Adrian Rebollar, a Watsonville native. Both Rebollar and Santa Cruz native Walmer Martinez, who was the club’s first-ever signing, played their college soccer at CSUMB, and the pair’s local roots mean they’ve swiftly become fan favorites.

But whether Monterey Bay F.C. is succeeding in engaging with communities beyond its Peninsula homebase remains open to debate among the club’s fans and followers – especially those from Salinas and the surrounding Valley.

RUBEN RAMIREZ GREW UP IN SALINAS AS A DIEHARD SOCCER FAN – his heritage luring his allegiances to the Mexican national team, affectionately known as El Tri. He notes that before Monterey Bay F.C., the “closest thing we had” to a hometown team was the Salinas-based California Jaguars, who played in USL precursor leagues for several years in the 1990s before folding in 1999.

So Ramirez embraced the opportunity to support a local club, purchasing Monterey Bay season tickets last year. He’s now ever-present at the front of the supporters’ section, playing a large drum that leads a growing selection of songs and chants emanating from the stands. “We finally got our own team,” Ramirez says, applauding MBFC for bringing local products like Rebollar and Martinez into its ranks.

Yet despite being just the kind of dedicated fan that Monterey Bay is looking to attract, Ramirez still feels the club has done “not enough at all” to engage with the Salinas community. For contrast he points to the San Jose Earthquakes, who have played in Major League Soccer, the top American soccer league, for more than a quarter-century and have long established a local following – one fostered through their recruitment of Salinas-based players and fan events like a season kickoff party at the Salinas Regional Soccer Complex just this February.

(MBFC would play the Earthquakes in a U.S. Open Cup matchup on April 25, billing the contest as the “BIGGEST MATCH IN CLUB HISTORY!” in marketing emails. Monterey Bay pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset win over San Jose before more than 4,000 fans at Cardinale Stadium, a victory that Beshoff lauded as “historic.”)

Salinas native Lucero, himself a longtime Earthquakes supporter, admits that he was initially concerned that Monterey Bay was “just going to be a team for the Peninsula,” given how “there’s a lot more money out there” that the club would look to tap by marketing primarily toward the area’s affluent residents. While he thinks the club could do more to attract fans in Salinas, he believes many are already gravitating toward the team – whether it’s going out to the games or attending the watch parties that Fuerza Union throws at XL Public House on Main Street.

“If you’re going to fill that stadium, it’s going to be people from Salinas mostly,” Lucero says, pointing to soccer’s embedded place in Latino culture and how even high school games between Alisal and Everett Alvarez can draw thousands of spectators.

A self-described cynic, Lucero says he truly believes Monterey Bay F.C. can be the kind of local institution capable of bringing together Monterey County’s socio-economically polarized communities under one banner. “In this area, culturally and socially, the Peninsula and the Valley have been two different universes,” he says. “And if this team works and does it right, they can unify those two.”

Beshoff says he’s intent on having the club live up to its name as a “union,” and agrees that drawing more folks from Salinas to the games is “100-percent the key” to MBFC’s future success. “Salinas is my market,” he says, noting the city’s working-class identity and how the sport is ingrained in the local culture.

To that end, Monterey Bay has grown its footprint in the county seat via the recent launch of MBFC2, an amateur development team based in Salinas that will play its games at Rabobank Stadium. Part of the team’s purpose is to spot and develop young local players – many of whom turned up for tryouts at Alisal High School this spring – and potentially give them a pathway to a pro career. The second team is led by MBFC assistant coach Ramiro Corrales – a Salinas native who had a long and distinguished career in MLS with San Jose, among other clubs – and Beshoff hopes it will be a “good bridge that we need” to further connect with the Salinas community.

Of course, it would also help if it were easier for folks in Salinas to get to Cardinale Stadium: The Monterey-Salinas Transit bus line that serves the stadium doesn’t operate on weekends, when most of the team’s matches are played, meaning there’s no public transportation to games.

Both Lucero and Shey Gibson, a Salinas resident who founded the college student-focused MBFC supporter group The Rising Tide, say they’ve spoken with fellow fans about potentially organizing shuttles to and from Salinas on game days. (USL club Phoenix Rising operates a similar service for its fans, Lucero notes.) That would provide Salinas-based supporters with easier access to matches while not having to worry about designated drivers, not to mention the cost of gas and a $15 parking pass. But for now, it remains just an idea.

WHILE MONTEREY BAY F.C. IS STILL TRYING TO FLESH OUT ITS NASCENT FANBASE, it’s clear that what it may lack in sheer numbers, it makes up for in passion among those who have already adopted the team as their own.

One needs to look no further than Dan Devlin, aka “Superfan Dan.” A lifelong soccer fan, Devlin was dismayed by the lack of noise and atmosphere at the club’s very first home match last May. So he took it upon himself to act as MBFC’s very own “Krazy” George Henderson – the legendary cheerleader who, equipped with a hand drum, has spent the past 50 years whipping sports crowds across the country into a frenzy.

Devlin is now a constant at Monterey Bay games, easily distinguishable by his bushy gray beard, colorful top hat and MBFC flag cape. Like Henderson, he wields a hand drum, traversing the circumference of the Cardinale Stadium field and leading the crowd through an array of chants. Devlin has long supported English club Newcastle United as well as San Jose Earthquakes, but after living in Monterey County for 27 years, he jumped at the opportunity to get behind a team representing his own community.

“I never had a hometown team, which is why this one is so important to me – this is the one I got in on the ground floor,” Devlin says. “This is my chance to be part of a family from the grassroots level, so I’m really excited about these guys.”

Given the extent to which Devlin has taken it upon himself to spread the gospel of Monterey Bay F.C., you could be forgiven for thinking he’s being compensated by the club. But he insists he’s not – he simply cares enough about the club’s potential, and the fledgling community of friends and fellow supporters coalescing around it, to spend all 17-plus home games enlivening the atmosphere around Cardinale Stadium.

When the team is on the road, Devlin emcees MBFC’s Monterey watch parties at the Britannia Arms pub on Alvarado Street. Devlin – who uses the parties as “indoctrination periods” to teach new chants and recruit more folks to the MBFC cause – recalls that at the first watch party of last season, only four people showed up at the Brit. By the final game of the season, he says the bar was packed to capacity and had to turn people away at the door.

On March 24, more than 30 fans gather at the pub to watch Monterey Bay’s first away game of the season against Texas’ Rio Grande Valley FC. Among those present is Phil Pardew, a nurse in Monterey who moved here from Virginia several years ago. Having initially gotten into the sport through his hometown MLS team, D.C. United, Pardew quickly adopted his new town’s new soccer team last year, picking up a pair of season tickets. “You’re so close to the field, you feel like you’re involved,” Pardew says.

It’s a relatively quiet first half as far as the match is concerned, but in the 62nd minute, Dixon works his magic once more. MBFC winger Chase Boone springs forward on a counterattack before launching an arcing through-ball directly onto Dixon’s path; the speedy striker gets on the end of it, beats the onrushing RGV goalkeeper some 30 yards away from his own goalline, and taps the ball into the open net.

It’s a moment of sheer release for the assembled crew at the Brit, who launch their scarves into the air and let out a collective roar. But their joy would be short-lived: Monterey Bay would soon have a player sent off for a red card, before conceding a late equalizer and having to settle for a 1-1 draw. A relatively disappointing result on the one hand, but a solid point on the road on the other.

Winning is important for Monterey Bay F.C., or any pro sports team that takes itself seriously. Still, it’s not the only thing. Win, lose, or draw, teams can be more than just a common point of civic pride for a town, city or region. They can also be the lifeblood of a community – a connective tissue that transcends what happens on the field and brings people from all walks of life together. That’s the promise of Monterey County’s very own football club; only time will tell if it’s realized.

“The longer this team sticks around, the better chance there is of this community coming together,” Lucero says. “We were all strangers last year. Now, Saturday comes and I’m like, ‘How quickly can I get to the stadium?’ It’s a growing family. It’s been pretty special.”