[music] -Soccer in LA is as popular as tacos and Dodger flags, and the region's importance in the growth of soccer is undeniable.

[music] -What attracted you to Angel City?

-Women's League.

-Women's.

The energy here is great.

-Everybody's welcome.

You feel safe.

-Really positive vibes.

Everyone's really nice.

This would not have been possible 70 years ago.

-Yes.

-Soccer's always been a part of my life.

That's how I met my husband.

Now I have my own little young soccer player who cheers her little booty off, too.

[laughter] -Soccer in SoCal today is as diverse as it's ever been.

The Greater LA Soccer League helped pave the way by providing an avenue for people from all over the world to join in the game.

There are plenty of fans and aficionados who still recall the early days of soccer in Los Angeles.

One such fan is Farah Farshad.

Originally from Iran, he moved to the US and quickly became a diehard fan of local soccer, and can attest to personally watching long-since-defunct teams such as the LA Wolves, the LA Toros, and the LA Aztecs when they were still around.

-He's on-side.

Here's a drive and a shot.

Rebound, a score.

[?]

scores for Los Angeles to tie it up.

-When you look at this field, Jackie Robinson Field, what kind of memories does it conjure?

-I don't remember the football lines.

-Yes, I think those are new.

[laughter] -Basically, the same.

Not much has changed.

There were some rough times in the stands and maybe in the field, especially with some fights and things going on.

It was a competitive league, but the biggest crowds that we would see were when they had some visiting teams come in.

-Really?

-I remember, I think a team from Finland somehow came and played there.

Then the San Pedro Croats, I think, hosted a Croatian team.

I remember the field in San Pedro was packed with about, probably, I don't know, 7,000, 8,000 people, or whatever the capacity was.

Other than that, most Sunday games that they had were maybe less than 100 people in attendance.

-How long did you follow the Greater LA Soccer League and the teams when it was active?

-Probably about 10 years or so.

The good thing is it was a decent level of soccer, and also getting a chance to see some of the players.

-Oh, so were there a couple of US national team players that would play in the league?

-Both of those guys, Hugo Perez and Marcelo Balboa, naturally did play big roles with the national team, and they were stars, as far as I'm concerned, in '94.

Hugo Perez was probably the best left-footed player we ever had.

[chuckles] -$0.50 plus tax for a ticket.

Wow.

-Yes, it was good-- [crosstalk] -You wouldn't mind paying that today.

-The program, yes, but the thing is, I didn't know anything about them.

I just had heard.

Then, of course, I was still trying to get acclimated, having just moved to the country and all that.

The language wasn't quite there.

I always wondered what the LA Toros were.

Of course, being a student of the history of the game in here, I went back and found out what was going on.

The two teams merged in the next year to basically be one of the founding teams for the North American Soccer League, under the name of LA Wolves, and they actually went belly up right after that.

It was a short-lived-- Anyways, this is what kick-started the whole thing for me as a fan.

It was the first time I actually experienced a professional game and was part of a championship game with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm.

Then, fast forward to 1976, that's when the first superstar for LA came in.

That was George Best, a Northern Irish player, a Manchester United fan.

Fast forward to 1986, and these are all seminal moments as far as I'm concerned, but the evolution of, let's say, pro soccer here in LA?

Those are the ones that I witnessed myself.

Indoor games had come and gone, the LA Lazers.

We used to go down to San Diego soccer because the Lazers weren't that good.

Anyways, in between that stuff and watching the local games, going to a lot of UCLA games, good soccer's being played over there.

-Soccer at the collegiate level in the US started in the 1800s, but the rules were all over the place, and at one point, abandoned for rugby until it gained traction again.

By 1911, here on the West Coast, programs were starting to pop up.

Stanford's team was one of the first to play outdoors amateur teams, followed by the University of San Francisco in 1932 and by UCLA.

In 1977, Norwegian-born and now UCLA Hall of Famer Ole Mikkelsen joined the men's team.

How did your time with the Maccabees come to an end?

-Basically, it came to an end because I got drafted into the pros at UCLA.

That was it.

-Oh, there we go.

-Yes.

I finished my senior season at UCLA and was drafted and went and signed a contract, moved away, and played in the NASL.

That was it.

I did actually have a break of about eight months when I transitioned from the NASL over to the Major Indoor Soccer League, ended up signing with the LA Lazers, and the Buss family.

During that eight-month window, I really wanted to continue to play and stay fit, and so I did approach the Maccabees, but the Homenetmen offered me more money.

[laughter] -That's how I think I ended up playing about 10 games with them at the tail end of the season and actually played in a game against the Maccabees.

Two of my former teammates at UCLA were playing for the Maccabees at that time, so that was fun.

[laughs] -Can you show me where on this field you scored your favorite goal?

-Oh, yes.

It's over there where the guy's blowing the whistle.

[laughter] -Actually, I would have to say that the favorite goal was a long strike from way outside that just happened to elude the goalkeeper because it was knuckling, but the one that I scored to win the semifinal game was in that goal down there.

-Part of the magic of the World Cup is its cyclical nature.

Nearly 200 teams representing as many nations have the same opportunity to compete for a chance for the final glory of lifting the Jules Rimet trophy at the end of the tournament.

Each national team has four years to build, change, adapt, and plan for the World Cup.

Players and coaches who begin the road to the World Cup don't always reach the tournament, and all but the host nation must show that they are worthy through a regional tournament to prove that they are the best of their region first to represent themselves and their people.

-You really get to see, on the soccer field, cultural expression.

That's the way I look at it.

Brazilians play like Brazilians live, Germans play like Germans live.

I really do think that for the US to be successful here, they really have to find a way to harness the culture, which is, I think, hardworking, determined, "Don't say no, just say go," type of intensity.

That was not something that I had ever been exposed to.

Being exposed to, in my case, the Israeli culture was a very, very gratifying learning experience.

I've never been to Israel.

It's on my list of things that I would like to do sometime in my life.

Every time we stepped on the field, it was against another culture, whether it was the Hungarian team or the Croatian team.

I think that that was one of my biggest takeaways from the time I spent in the Great Los Angeles League.

-Without the Greater LA Soccer League, MLS probably is not in Los Angeles, certainly not with two teams.

We probably don't have Angel City, the women's professional team, in the NWSL.

We certainly don't have a second World Cup, probably not even a first.

-What happened to the Greater LA Soccer League?

Sadly, it came to an abrupt end around the time the World Cup arrived in Los Angeles.

Gabriel Cucuk, founder and president of the San Pedro Yugoslavs, took over as president of the league in 1989 and saw it through its end, but soccer would finally get its due here in the US.

The FIFA Men's World Cup arrived in 1994 in a watershed moment for the sport here at home.

-We established ourselves.

We played in the '90 World Cup, and we host the 1994 World Cup.

How's that possible?

I remember being 15 years old in Germany and Berlin, I never thought I'd be at 29, 30 years old playing in the Rose Bowl at the World Cup.

-Ramos putting it in to Caligiuri.

Beats the first man.

A left-footed shot.

[cheers] Paul Caligiuri has scored a goal, and the USA lead 1-0.

An amazing goal by Caligiuri.

-This is different for me.

This is an unbelievable moment.

To think of where we were at, we're playing for something bigger.

We're trying to put soccer etched, engraved forever into American society.

-To play for the '94 team, that was a dream come true because you get to a point where you know you have a shot to play in a World Cup, and then, let alone for it to be in your home country.

That was a dream.

To be here in Los Angeles as well, my home city, that was the ultimate goal.

-Five years later, the third edition of FIFA's Women's World Cup made its own mark.

-You know- -'99?

--'99 World Cup, that was epic for a lot of us because women's soccer officially got on the map in such a big way.

Fun story, I'll try not to get choked up sharing it, but '99 World Cup where the Blue Angels fly over, I'm like, "Oh my gosh," the national anthem, 90-some-odd thousand people, you're like, "Oh my God, this is-- It's made it."

It was just awesome.

The game was epic.

Oh, my gosh.

-Yes.

Hearing what you're saying, it's like we felt seen.

-Yes, totally.

-All our passion, all our hard work.

Even though we weren't on the field, we felt seen.

[crosstalk] -Yes, totally.

I think that's when so many of us felt like women's soccer really made it.

Then, the game was just epic.

The final was against China.

Briana Scurry made her amazing save at the end of the game.

Brandi is clutch.

I have to give it to her, she's an incredibly talented player.

She is the one to step up and take a PK when everything's on the line.

You couldn't have a photo finish any better than going down to PKs.

-Oh, yes.

-Being on the US Women's National Team is a privilege.

It is something that is to be, I think, cared for and respected with the utmost consciousness.

The amount of work to get to the point where we are today with a full-blown professional league with players from around the world and television, and the fact that these players are earning salaries that they make a living doing is remarkable.

-Los Angeles made soccer history in both tournaments as the Rose Bowl in Pasadena was selected as the host venue for the final match of each tournament.

-Then, after the '99 World Cup, that's when we basically had our first professional soccer league, which was the Women's United Soccer Association, which was forming in 2000, and I think our first games were in 2001.

-LA is the sports capital of the world, and it deserves to have a women's team.

We have the best athletes in the world to play on the US Women's National Team and in the National Women's Soccer League, and we wanted to bring the best athletes to the best city.

-Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to play professional soccer.

At the time, when I made the choice that that's what I wanted to pursue, there was no women's soccer team here in LA.

I think it was-- I was in high school when there was a team, Angel City, here.

Ever since that was happening, I knew that this is exactly where I wanted to be at some point in my career.

-When you're thinking about 32-odd years later, the World Cup is coming back to the United States, and we're going to be hosting the US team again, at least 2 games here in Los Angeles.

It just shows everyone around the world understands that soccer has a place here in Los Angeles and that Los Angeles is a sports city.

That it can host and maintain any sport out there, that LA is the place to be.

-We caught up with some of the kids playing soccer today to ask them a few questions like, "What do you like about playing soccer?"

-I like soccer because it's fun and you could play and score goals.

-You get to play a bunch of different positions.

You get to learn what you're good at.

-I like scoring goals and defending.

-We're trying to work on more passing, dribbling.

-When you learn how to shoot from angles, it's fun.

-The tournaments, we have a lot of them.

-If you want to see more about Southern California soccer, let us know in the comments, and be sure to like and subscribe.

[music]