The day of the first MLS game, half of the home team got sick.
Before the match, the San Jose Clash went out to Il Fornaio, a local Italian spot, for lunch. Several hours later, four players threw up their lunch. Multiple players reported nausea, leading athletic trainers and coaches to wonder if they had suffered food poisoning.
It wasn’t the food. It was the nerves.
Forward Eric Wynalda represented a rare caste of players who had a wealth of professional and international experience before joining MLS — he’d played in several World Cups and in the German Bundesliga before returning home to the U.