If you didn’t know, Monterey County has its very own pro soccer team—and they’re flying pretty high at the moment.

Rey Mashayekhi here, with a story about Monterey County’s own pro soccer team.

Monterey Bay F.C. had a difficult debut season in the USL Championship, the second-tier of American pro soccer. But in year two, things are already looking much better. The roster has established continuity and been bolstered by new signings, and it’s starting to show with wins on the pitch. Its home field, the renovated Cardinale Stadium on CSU Monterey Bay’s campus, is now a sleek, 6,000-seat soccer-specific stadium featuring great local food and beverage vendors. 

But now that they’ve built it, the question is whether the people will come. MBFC averaged just over 3,600 in attendance last year; this season’s turnouts have been roughly the same, and owner Ray Beshoff says his “only disappointment is we’re not selling out every game.”

“We can only survive if we get the fans,” Beshoff told me. “We can’t survive without them.”

In this week’s cover story, I wrote about Monterey Bay F.C.’s quest to establish a foothold in the local community—how some passionate, diehard fans have already embraced the club, but also the work that remains to be done if the team is to have a long-term future here. 

For me, the most fascinating conflict was the same one that dominates the social fabric in Monterey County: the schism between the Peninsula and the Salinas Valley. Like many sports teams, MBFC has sought to position itself as a regional unifier—even adopting the moniker of “Union,” a common club identifier in the soccer world, as an alternative name signaling a link between the Salinas Valley’s working-class, majority Latino populace and the Monterey Peninsula’s affluent, mostly white residents.

Among fans I spoke with, there were differing views on whether the club is succeeding in living up to that ideal, with Salinas native Ruben Ramirez telling me that MBFC is doing “not enough at all” to engage with the Valley’s soccer-loving community. 

Another Salinas native, Oz Lucero, admitted initial reservations that the club was “just going to be a team for the Peninsula,” given its Seaside base and the money to be made by marketing toward Peninsula residents and sponsors. Still, Lucero says he believes in MBFC’s potential as a rare local institution capable of uniting Monterey County’s polarized communities under one banner. “In this area, culturally and socially, the Peninsula and the Valley have been two different universes,” Lucero says. “And if this team works and does it right, they can unify those two.” 

Ultimately, nothing gets people behind a team like winning, and Monterey Bay F.C. is making considerable strides in that regard. On Tuesday night, after the Weekly’s print deadline, the club notched easily the biggest victory in its young history—defeating Major League Soccer side San Jose Earthquakes 1-0 in a U.S. Open Cup match at Cardinale Stadium. 

Playing in America’s top soccer league for a quarter-century, the Earthquakes have long been the dominant pro team in Northern California and have built a following across Monterey County and the Central Coast. Yet despite their deeper pockets and established infrastructure, San Jose was no match for a hard-working Monterey Bay side that pulled off the win before more than 4,000 fans at Cardinale.

And it doesn’t stop there. On Thursday, Monterey Bay’s next opponent in the U.S. Open Cup was revealed: Los Angeles F.C., the defending MLS Cup champions, who will make the trip up to Seaside on May 9.

It’s been fun following MBFC’s journey as it looks to give the community a sports team to be proud of, and I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed reporting it.

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Monterey County’s own pro soccer team enters year two. Plus, your Sunday Paper.