SANTA CLARA, Calif. — After the Houston Dynamo's relaxed practice amid the calming breezes and red-tile roofs in a particularly charming corner of the Bay Area, Dwayne De Rosario spared a moment to ponder what might have happened if the San Jose Earthquakes had never left home.

"It was a great team, a great thing we had going," said De Rosario, the goal-scoring midfielder with 10 teammates who reluctantly traded the Quakes' signature blue shirts for Dynamo orange 2½ years ago.

"It was just sad to see it basically destroyed. Thankfully, we were able to keep together most of the guys and carry on the tradition in Houston."

The Bay Area still holds sweet memories for De Rosario, coach Dominic Kinnear, Hawaii's Brian Ching and the other Dynamo players who won two championships and repeatedly defied low expectations with the Earthquakes. The club spent 10 years in San Jose before paltry attendance and stadium problems prompted their owners to bolt for Houston after the 2005 season, leaving behind the Quakes' history and colors.

The Earthquakes returned to Major League Soccer as an expansion franchise this year, and the Dynamo will face them Thursday night in an unusual homecoming for players and coaches who never wanted to leave, yet found even greater success after their departure.

Houston has won back-to-back MLS championships with the core of the Quakes, who also won titles in 2001 and 2003 before falling short with the league's best regular-season team in 2005. Eight Dynamo players won titles in both cities, with De Rosario picking up all four rings.

"It's going to be bittersweet, but hopefully we leave with a bittersweet victory," De Rosario said. "I'd like to say I wish them all the best, but unfortunately they play in our conference."

Nostalgia could be thick at Buck Shaw Stadium, the pine-tree-lined field on the Santa Clara University campus where the new Quakes play most of their home games while waiting to build the soccer-specific stadium that always eluded the club's previous incarnation.

Fans will see De Rosario, the third-leading scorer in Quakes franchise history behind only Ronald Cerritos and Landon Donovan; Ching, the fourth-leading scorer; Cup-winning goalie Pat Onstad; and midfielder Richard Mulrooney, the San Jose career leader in games and minutes played.

With more salt than pepper in his hair and beard since he left San Jose, Kinnear refuses to entertain disappointment about the move — even though he grew up in the Bay Area and began his coaching career in San Jose under Frank Yallop, serving as an assistant for the two title-winning teams before leading the 2005 club to an improbably wonderful season.

"There was really no time to be melancholy," said Kinnear, who was raised in nearby Fremont and later played for a club team in San Francisco. "Our schedules have been crazy ever since. Just the moving and getting our families settled took up the first year. Now, I think the team has ingrained itself into the Houston community, so it all kind of works out."

Kinnear found an immediate positive two years ago when he bought a house in Houston for less money than he had paid for a house in San Jose eight years earlier — a brand-new Texas homestead with 1,500 more square feet, no less. The Bay Area might be absurdly expensive, yet it's also blessedly free of the Houston heat and humidity that are "sometimes unbearable" and "the worst thing about living there," Kinnear said.

Houston's former Quakes already have been in the Bay Area this year. The clubs played exhibitions in San Francisco and San Jose three months ago.

The Quakes' fans cheered and booed their former favorites, clearly conflicted in their feelings about the whole reunion — much like the Dynamo themselves.

"The preseason let us get used to playing against our friends here," De Rosario said. "We're playing against our old fans, and it's weird. You get that out of the way, and now it's business."

De Rosario also understands the San Jose fans' frustration about seeing their longtime winners get away over financial issues that the new, struggling Quakes don't face. San Jose's deep-pocketed owners, Lew Wolff and John Fisher, got their franchise with little more than a vow to build a stadium, and they secured an opportunity to buy land for the arena earlier this week.

Yet Kinnear can even turn that frustration into another reason to embrace the Quakes' departure.

"I'm sure one day I'll move back to California with my family," Kinnear said. "It'll be nice that we can come out and watch a professional team. This is a great area for soccer, and until they got the Quakes back, I think it was missing that highest standard."