Earthquakes season-ticket holder Stuart Berman has a little problem when it comes to American soccer hero Landon Donovan.

Hate him? Or embrace him?

“Watching him contribute to one of the best, if not the best, moments in U.S. soccer history makes it a little more challenging to hate him,” Berman said of Donovan’s groundbreaking performance at the World Cup in South Africa.

That’s one fan’s reasonable take about the former Earthquakes midfielder, who led San Jose to two Major League Soccer titles only to land with archrival Los Angeles in 2005.

Quakes supporters with long memories probably won’t be so forgiving when Donovan, 28, makes his only appearance of the season at Buck Shaw Stadium on Saturday with the first-place Galaxy. After receiving warm welcomes in the three road games he has played since returning from the World Cup, Donovan can expect to hear nasty insults from San Jose fans who call the player they once adored “Landycakes.”

“When he puts on the U.S. national team shirt, he’s Landon Donovan, Team USA,” said Alex Davidson, leader of the Quakes fan club the Casbah. “As soon as he takes that shirt off he’s the guy who betrayed us.”

San Jose’s Brando Erazo, a member of the 1906 Ultras fan group, is even less poetic: “I still hate him. Nothing will ever change it. I don’t care if he ever comes back here.”

Some fans just won’t forgive Donovan for abandoning the team in 2004 when it had ownership issues. Dan Margarit, founder of the Ultras, calls the midfielder “a traitor and a coward — he left the ship before we sunk.”

In 2005, fans decapitated a piñata made in his image in Donovan’s return to Spartan Stadium with the Galaxy. They hung signs saying, “Landon Judas Donovan” and “Primadonovan Traitor.”

The heated emotions from some of the Earthquakes’ more ardent supporters are an outgrowth of the team’s shaky history with MLS that began in 1996.

Then called the Clash, the team struggled to find stable ownership. The Anschutz Entertainment Group eventually took over the club while owning other teams, including the Galaxy. San Jose fans say AEG did little for the Earthquakes other than threaten to move them because of the inability to build a new stadium.

Despite the lack of ownership support, the Quakes won championships in 2001 and 2003, thanks in part to Donovan, who left San Jose at the end of 2004 saying he wanted to broaden his soccer horizons in Germany. When he returned to his native Southern California to play for the Galaxy a few months later, Quakes fans were circumspect.

Many believe the move to Germany was an AEG-conceived ploy to get Donovan to Los Angeles by circumventing MLS rules. Whatever happened, Donovan’s switch inflamed one of the league’s fiercest rivalries. AEG subsequently moved the Quakes to Houston after the 2005 season. But some San Jose fans continued to despise the Galaxy.

In other words, they loathe L.A.

“You take us away again and when we come back we’re still going to hate them,” said Davidson, of Sacramento.

Donovan wasn’t available to speak this week, according to a Galaxy spokesman, but he recently told the Mercury News, “I can put myself in their shoes and realize that they lost one of their best players and then they lost their team. That would make me upset as a fan, too. So I don’t blame anybody for feeling the way they do.”

Coach Frank Yallop hopes supporters dispense with boorish behavior although Donovan scored a last-minute goal July 22 that allowed the Galaxy to escape with a 2-2 draw against the Quakes.

“We’ve got to remember what Landon did for this team,” said Yallop, who coached Donovan in San Jose and for one season in Los Angeles before returning to help start the Quakes’ expansion team in 2008. “It’s time to let it go.”

Season-ticket holder Ariel Vaughn of Sonora already has: She owns a signed Donovan jersey.

Vaughn, 17, won’t sit with the fans who plan to scream obscenities at Donovan.

“But am I going to cheer for him the entire time?” she asked.

“Probably not.”

Contact Elliott Almond at 408-920-5865 and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/elliottalmond.