The Great American Soccer Experiment is now two games old.

CD Chivas-USA, the Mexican-owned, Mexican-flavored, and Mexican-styled MLS franchise, has lost a home game to D.C. United, and tied a road game against the San Jose Earthquakes. One point out of a possible six isn’t a wildly successful start to Chivas’s American adventure, but the club has the potential to revolutionize the sport in this country.

This is not hyperbole. American soccer has been a European-oriented sport for 100 years. That made sense when all the soccer-playing immigrants were from Europe, but the sport has shamefully resisted change as the immigration pattern has shifted. Now the soccer immigrants come in their many thousands from the south, and they bring the Latino game with them. They run into entrenched European attitudes, particularly at the top levels of the American game, attitudes that reveal themselves in a sullen refusal to accept, or even notice, that a sea change is underway.

Of course there have been signs of progress for the Hispanics, but they have been painfully slow arriving. Hence the importance of Chivas-USA as the first major attempt by American soccer to come to grips with the challenge – and the opportunities – presented by the growth of the Latino game in the U.S.

The hope is that Chivas-USA will draw attention to the Latino game, will prove its validity on the field, and will mobilize the huge pool of Hispanic fans. Oh yes, and that it will inject some much-needed color and passion into MLS.

While Chivas-USA has yet to come up with a victory, the two games it has played give reason for guarded optimism. The team has not – as various gloomy naysayers were predicting – been blown away. It has proved competitive.

Chivas-USA labored in vain in its opening game, a 2-0 loss to D.C. United. Nothing came easy for Chivas, outpaced and outmuscled for 90 minutes. They hung on, defending heroically while looking a rather bewildered bunch – but was that not to be expected for a team playing its first-ever league game, and that against the current MLS champions?

There was another mitigating circumstance. After half an hour of play, Chivas lost its key midfielder, Francisco Gomez, stretchered off following an inexcusably crude tackle from D.C.’s Alecko Eskandarian. Gomez, a six-year MLS veteran, was replaced by the 19-year-old Francisco Mendoza, a Mexican playing his first game in the U.S.

With Gomez gone, the veteran Ramon Ramirez found himself having to organize not only the defensive part of the Chivas midfield, but the creative aspect as well. That was asking too much of the 35-year-old, and the Chivas offense inevitably faded.

But at no point did Chivas appear inferior at the skill level. Its players’ ball handling was excellent, and they showed greater poise and speed of play during Saturday’s game in San Jose.

Chivas and the Earthquakes gave us a wildly exciting 3-3 tie that had almost everything – passion, commitment, and plenty of goals. For Chivas, the arrival of the Costa Rican Douglas Sequeira (he had been unable to join the team a week earlier because of visa problems) should have shored up some of its defensive weaknesses, but these were further complicated at the hour mark when Sequeira’s fellow center back, Ryan Suarez, had to leave the game with a back injury following a clumsy challenge from the Earthquakes’ Troy Dayak.

But with Chivas trailing 3-2 in the 91st minute, Sequeira abandoned his defensive position and raced upfield into the Earthquakes’ penalty area, where he got on the end of an Antonio Martinez free kick to head the equalizer. The goal was hardly an artistic triumph – Sequeira later admitted that he scored it with the back of his head – and in that it was a faithful reflection of the way Chivas has played in its two games: scrappy, determined, and unpredictable.

So far there has been little sign of the ball control and the short-passing game that is the hallmark of Mexican soccer. It is to be hoped that the style will come as the players get used to the rhythm of MLS play. Any doubts on that point revolve around the surprise choice of Thomas Rongen, an Americanized Dutchman, as the Chivas coach. What Rongen has produced so far looks much more like standard MLS fare than Mexican style soccer.

Not all the responsibility for that can be laid on Rongen. On his roster he has seven players from the Chivas parent club – CD Guadalajara in Mexico – but apart from team captain Ramon Ramirez, they are all young and inexperienced, and Rongen can hardly be faulted for including in his starting lineups a majority of experienced players signed from other MLS clubs.

The final say on the matter of style will come from the fans. In Mexico, Chivas is known as the purest, the most Mexican, of the country’s pro clubs. It is the only one that has never fielded a non-Mexican player. MLS regulations prevent such an arrangement for Chivas-USA, but the club has only four non-Hispanics on its current roster, and the ultimate aim is clearly to field a Hispanic-style team.

That is what the fans will want. Their numbers at the first-ever Chivas home game were lower than hoped for, but the enthusiasm and the excitement were exactly what MLS is hoping Chivas will bring. Indeed, the 18,500 Chivas fans at the Home Depot Center on April 2 seemed livelier and noisier than the sell-out crowd of 27,000 that showed up a week later to see the Los Angeles Galaxy, which shares the stadium with Chivas.

When Chivas played in San Jose this past weekend, about half the fans were wearing the red-and-white Chivas colors. The atmosphere they created was pure soccer, their cheers and whistles rising and falling as the game ebbed and flowed – an atmosphere that only comes from a crowd that is paying attention, that is sensitive to every move and change of fortune on the field.

The Chivas fans are doing their part in the Great American Soccer Experiment. In order to survive in MLS, Chivas may need, at this stage, to play the more straightforward, physical game that most MLS teams practice. But that style, and the limited aim of survival, are unlikely to satisfy Chivas fans for too long. For Chivas-USA to play its role as a showcase for Latino soccer – to play Mexican-style soccer in MLS, and to win while doing it – it is already clear that the team needs to add a couple of more experienced Mexican players.