In the end, having a championship team with the best player in the world wasn't enough for FC Gold Pride.

The club is dead, The Chronicle has learned, although a formal announcement from Women's Professional Soccer won't come until next week.

The league had extended a Nov. 1 deadline until Monday for teams to post reserve fund payments. Club and league officials said it was highly unlikely that an investor would step in at the 11th hour and save the team, especially since the Pride has been looking unsuccessfully for a savior since June.

So the East Bay team that featured four-time FIFA world player of the year Marta, posted by far the best record in the regular season and then won the title game in a 4-0 rout of Philadelphia is done.

That's a bitter pill to those who follow women's soccer in the Bay Area. Two women's professional teams have now folded here in seven years.

The San Jose CyberRays went under in 2003 when the Women's United Soccer Association folded after three years.

"I don't know if there's an appetite for women's professional sports, much less for women's soccer, in the Bay Area," Pride general manager Ilisa Kessler said Friday.

Owners Brian and Nancy NeSmith of Los Altos lost $2 million on the team this year and $3 million last year, Kessler said.

Nancy NeSmith said she couldn't comment on the status of the club because she was under a gag order by the league while it tried to sort out which teams had the money to survive.

After sharing Santa Clara's Buck Shaw Stadium with the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer last year, the Pride opened this season at Castro Valley High School before moving in June to 5,400-seat Pioneer Stadium on the Cal State East Bay campus in Hayward.

The average season's attendance was just 2,400, Kessler said, even though most tickets cost less than $18.

While pointing out that "nothing's official yet" regarding the Pride, league CEO Anne-Marie Eileraas said, "They had an incredible run and it's a terrible blow for Bay Area fans and the league's sponsors and players, but the league is bigger than one team. The history of new leagues is that teams come and go."