When veteran Minneapolis soccer referee Raul Sanchez offered a course in refereeing, 32 Latino soccer fans showed up. He wasn’t surprised.

By his count, there are at least 15 Latino soccer leagues in the Twin Cities, and they average 30 teams apiece. And they’re growing. Would a professional soccer stadium somehow benefit the Latino community?

“Definitely,” said Sanchez, who runs a Thursday night call-in show on KQSP La Picosa 1530 AM.

The metro area’s East African immigrant leaders are no less excited. The Oromo people of Ethiopia and northern Kenya have rallied through political persecution and other forms of adversity, but a challenge Saturday at James Griffin Stadium in St. Paul is of an entirely different sort.

The Oromo All-Stars — top players from teams across North America and Australia — were playing the Minnesota United FC reserve team. The game launches a weeklong Oromo soccer tournament at St. Paul’s Central High School and is the first public display of affection between one of the city’s largest immigrant communities and the state’s professional soccer team.

Minnesota United team owner Bill McGuire hopes to grow his franchise and open a Major League Soccer stadium near downtown Minneapolis, or near Snelling and University avenues in St. Paul, and he may need the blessing of lesser-known youth and ethnic teams from the Twin Cities’ urban core to do it.

If the 18,000- to 24,000-seat soccer stadium lands in St. Paul, it would sit three or four light-rail stops away from the Oromo Community of Minnesota cultural center at University Avenue and Mackubin Street, and just as close to major gathering spaces for the Eritrean, Cameroonian, Somali, Hmong and Burmese immigrants, among other ethnic groups.

“It’s very exciting,” said Hassen Hussein, executive director of the Oromo Community of Minnesota. A stadium “would be transformative. It would be a great benefit to the community.”

DECIDING WHO CAN PLAY

There’s logical synergy there, and many questions. To make the case that his soccer stadium deserves a series of tax breaks and will benefit St. Paul, McGuire would benefit from having immigrant activists, youth leagues and lesser-known ethnic teams on his side. But will those small, amateur leagues really be invited to practice or compete in a professional soccer stadium?

Soccer aficionados have their doubts, given the likely wear and tear on a grass field.

“This is a major league team where the surface is probably more important than any other sport except hockey and is much more work and expensive to maintain than a sheet of ice,” said Brian Quarstad, a St. Paul-based coach and Web editor with IMSoccerNews.com and NorthernPitch.com.

But Quarstad sees other benefits. “I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to envision all sorts of ways that MNUFC could outreach into the nearby communities,” he said. “That might be holding soccer clinics, sponsoring training around the area or scouting for talent.”

The annual Hmong soccer tournament at St. Paul’s Como Park, for example, would probably be too intensive to play in a professional stadium. But Sher Yang, an assistant coach at Hamline University and youth coach for a traveling club in Maple Grove, sees a different upside — such as bringing Hmong kids from Frogtown and the East Side of St. Paul, Latinos from the West Side and other groups to professional games in their own city.

It’s been tough, though not impossible, to get low-income kids and recent immigrants to games in the suburbs. Locating the stadium in the city is key, Yang said. “I think that it will help, just because of the transportation, trying to get to the games.”

Barclay Kruse, a spokesman for the National Sports Center in Blaine, said ethnic teams don’t venture out much to the center’s 52 athletic fields, though Latino teams from the Azteca League have rented time in the past. “Travel distance is the main issue,” he said.

IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Economist Bruce Corrie is convinced that there are multiple ways to connect St. Paul’s ethnic communities to a professional stadium, and that the relationships will be mutually beneficial.

At a recent breakfast panel in downtown St. Paul, McGuire “did mention the strong support of immigrant communities for soccer and the growth in demand,” said Corrie, a Concordia University professor who studies immigrant economies in the Twin Cities. “I offered to help in any way, as I know some of the players, such as the Oromo community and their soccer league.”

Corrie is envisioning playing time for youth leagues, which produce less wear on a field than adult leagues, and perhaps professional mentoring between athletes and kids from nearby low-income housing developments such as Skyline Tower on St. Anthony Avenue, which is home to a large East African community. Major League Soccer historically seeds soccer academies and youth teams of its own. A soccer stadium brings with it some job opportunities.

“There are a number of positive benefits it could have to engage youth, build values, provide options for sports, and in the process help them close the achievement gap,” Corrie said.

McGuire, in a November 2012 interview with Quarstad at IMSoccerNews.com, described soccer as a multicultural sport that continues to grow in popularity as the region becomes more diverse. “We need to figure out how to make the team most accessible to the community broadly,” he said. “That’s geographic reach, demographic, ethnicity.”

Corrie’s recent survey of 319 African immigrants in Minnesota found that 63 — or 20 percent — said they bought season tickets or attended an occasional Minnesota United game.

BLAINE EXPERIENCE

United has sometimes been resistant to having outside leagues and non-sporting events in the National Sports Center stadium where the team plays its home games. “There is some tension,” said the center’s Kruse.

The Blaine stadium seats about 8,500 spectators, with standing room for up to 1,500 more, and United games run close to capacity.

Nevertheless, KTIS Radio hosts a Christian rock concert that attracts 30,000 people to the stadium over the course of two days. The stage is built on the edge of the field to avoid bringing trucks onto the playing surface.

The Schwan’s USA Cup drew 1,070 youth soccer teams from around the world to the National Sports Center in mid-July, and the United field was in the rotation.

“During the USA Cup, we don’t play that field as heavily as we do some other fields, as an accommodation to Minnesota United, but we played over 50 youth games on that field,” Kruse said. “We definitely used it.”

Until United’s next home game on Aug. 8, however, no one will touch the field except for seeding, aeration and the like. “The best thing you can do to a soccer field is rest it,” Kruse said.

While the team does not have a long-term contract with the National Sports Center, Kruse believes the team will continue to use the Blaine facility for practices more than a proposed stadium in Minneapolis or St. Paul. The sports center has bed space that can accommodate youth camps and an indoor hall appropriate for youth practice in the winter.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE RELATIONSHIP

The unusual relationship between the St. Paul Saints and the public provides some recent precedent for community partnerships in the city. It also sets an unusually high bar.

The new 7,200-seat regional ballpark in Lowertown is owned by St. Paul and has become a popular venue for non-Saints events, such as Hamline University, high school and American Legion baseball. There are also concerts, parties and the upcoming Internet Cat Video Festival on Aug. 12. And as long as the front office is staffed, the public is invited to tour the concourse and enjoy lunch in the stands.

That easy-breezy attitude may not carry over to a United stadium, regardless of whether it is publicly or privately owned, in part because of its size. Whatever type of public-private partnership is crafted, an MLS stadium “will be under the control of the team,” Kruse predicted. “The stadium won’t be open like a public park. It’ll be some sort of controlled usage. It’s going to be their decision.”

Given the lack of quality and affordable playing spaces in the urban core, Corrie hopes ethnic teams will be able to forge relationships with high schools and universities, whether or not United comes to St. Paul. Concordia University’s Sea Foam Stadium in St. Paul seats about 3,500 spectators in bleacher seating, and an inflatable dome allows for year-round use.

James Griffin Stadium, which recently underwent improvements, seats more than 4,600 spectators around an artificial-turf field. The stadium was home to a professional soccer team, the Minnesota Thunder, from 2004 to 2008. The Thunder, which dissolved in 2009, played its final two seasons at the National Sports Center.

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.