female announcer: This film was made possible by the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

[waves crashing] Matt O'Connor Simpson: What would you say the biggest sport in LA is?

male: Boxing's pretty big.

male: Baseball, right now.

male: Basketball.

male: The Lakers, Kobe Bryant.

male: Major League Baseball, because we have the Dodgers.

Matt O'Connor Simpson: Do they love soccer in LA as well?

male: Yeah, no.

[laughs] No, no.

Soccer in LA, no.

[commentator within track] Oh my word, he's completely fooled -- And there is the second goal for Real Madrid, David Beckham.

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah.

♪ ♪ Made it out to Madrid, Had to brush up ♪ ♪ on the Castellano.

♪ ♪ Became a santo sagrado without the Vaticano.

♪ ♪ Crosses turned volleys for Ronaldo and Zidane.

♪ ♪ Robinho mi amigo, peace to Guti with the swag.

♪ ♪ We even won La Liga, Imma movie with the passes.

♪ ♪ It's, yours truly, girly moody in the Jag.

♪ ♪ Moved out to the west coast and I started for the team.

♪ ♪ Gave the Galaxy two titles with Donovan and Keane.

♪ Matt O'Connor Simpson: When you think about sport in LA, you probably think about basketball, American football, and baseball.

But what about soccer?

Well, I've flown over from rainy England to find out how LA became a soccer city.

Let's go jump in the Buick.

♪ Had one last run, so I did it in France.

♪ ♪ PSG heard about the greatness, so I gave them ♪ ♪ a glance, slay up.

♪ Matt: Do you see, like, more and more soccer stuff popping up in LA?

male: I guess you don't think about it until somebody mentions it, and then you start seeing it everywhere, right?

Matt: First up, let's go meet someone who's seen it all when it comes to LA soccer.

He's even got the T-shirt to prove it.

And the hat, and the jacket.

Matt: Far!

Far Fashad: Hey, I know you.

Matt: How you doing, man?

Thanks for taking the time.

You been okay?

Far Fashad: Yeah, fine, fine.

Matt: Good stuff.

I like that you've got it all.

Got the Galaxy, got the USA.

Yeah, you can do a reveal if you want.

Far Fashad: Ready for this?

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool.

Far Fashad: This is like history is gonna come and punch you in the face.

Matt: What was soccer like when you first moved here?

You know, could you find it straight away?

Far Fashad: What's soccer?

Matt: Just--yeah, there you go.

What's soccer?

That's very good.

Far Fashad: The first really soccer experience that I had was in high school when we learned about the Wolves, who ended up going to a couple of games.

And the game of course was the final.

It drew 18,000 people, and that's what really kickstarted the whole thing for me.

[indistinct chatter] Matt: That's still there?

Oh, you like it?

[crosstalk] Matt: You know what I mean?

Far Fashad: You know, watching the Aztecs play, you know, when George Best joined them, is probably the highlight for me as a soccer fan.

He's soccer royalty, as far as I'm concerned.

Like, to me, going to these games was it.

I mean, that's why we're here, because Best started this place.

Matt: That's so good.

Matt: Far Fashad, the Forrest Gump of LA soccer.

He truly was there for everything.

Next stop, Pasadena, for a history lesson from one of the city's best sports journalists.

Matt: Hiya, Kevin, you alright?

Nice to meet you, man.

Kevin Baxter: Welcome to history.

Kevin Baxter: It's like the tip of an iceberg.

I mean, you see what we have here now with MLS and NWSL and the World Cup coming, but underneath the surface, soccer history in LA goes back to the very early days of the last century, of the 20th century.

In like 1902, the founding of a football league that ran the length of California.

In the '50s, right after World War II, it was sort of broken off and became the Greater LA Soccer League, and that was really the history, the beginning of the history of organized football soccer in Southern California.

Matt: How important is immigration when we talk about soccer in LA?

Kevin Baxter: Well, it is huge.

I mean, LA, as everybody knows, is a very international city.

The Greater LA Soccer League was made up mostly of immigrant teams.

We had like the San Pedro Croats, the Los Angeles Hungarians, the LA Kickers who were called the Kickers, but it was primarily a German team.

The next super club was Maccabi, which was a team of Jewish émigrés.

That immigrant background, all of this was built around immigrant teams.

I mean, it wasn't an American sport then, in the '40s, '50s, '60s.

It was a sport that was imported from foreign countries by immigrants.

So of course they would have the best players and the best teams.

commentator: What an unbelievable finish for the 30-minute overtime period.

You just can't pack much more action into the short stretch than those two teams did.

Even though most of the fans were rooting for the Wolves, they were ecstatic.

This was sports excitement at its best.

You better believe it.

Matt: Just for people who might not be aware of the story of LA Wolves, because it's an amazing one, just tell us a bit about that.

Kevin Baxter: The moment that LA Wolves came online, what that did, that was the bridge.

That was the first attempt at professional soccer football in Los Angeles.

It only lasted two years, but its importance to what came after can't be overstated, because it proved that professional football, professional soccer, could work in Southern California with the right ingredients.

♪♪♪ Matt: What Kevin had said about immigration was really interesting, but I wanted to go deeper.

I'd heard about this guy who was screen printing incredible messages and artwork onto football shirts.

His name?

Nico Aviña, an artist, activist, and soccer nut located in Boyle Heights, one of LA's most historic immigrant communities.

Matt: Nico!

Nico Aviña: Hey, what's up, man?

How you doing?

Matt: Yeah, good, man.

Nico Aviña: Is LA a soccer city?

I think it is.

I think it's always been.

Being in a Latin American community, soccer has always been present and relevant in Los Angeles.

It's just been on the blind side of things, you know?

Like, it was ignored for a very long time.

And now that you have teams from MLS or like, you know, people trying to make it a thing, it's like, hey, we've been here this whole time.

LA has always been a soccer city, especially because it's an immigrant community.

And I'm not just talking about folks from Latin America.

You had a lot of Europeans coming in here.

You had Russian Molokans here.

You had Jewish Americans here.

You had Japanese Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans, all living in this one community which is Boyle Heights.

It's always been the sport of the working-class people in LA.

Matt: When Nico was talking about the mingling of different cultures through soccer, it got me thinking about my experiences playing Sunday league in London, and to be honest, it made me really, really wanna go play football.

Tim Walsh: We say it's the home of the dreamers, drifters, nobodies, and somebodies, essentially trying to use the sport in a way to impact lives for the better.

male: It's a community club, it's an open pick-up.

You don't pay anything to play.

You show up, you have your team, or you make friends and you play.

That's it.

male: What up?

How are you?

Matt: Thanks for having us.

male: Of course, of course.

Welcome to Venice.

male: Hey, this is the --.

Let's go.

Matt: People are trying to skill you the whole time, like someone was just like facing me off.

Matt: It's so good how open it is, and anyone can rock up and play.

male: That's game, that's game, that's game.

Tim Walsh: And we've been running that game every Sunday for the last ten years.

All kinds of weather, we always have enough to play.

Mbappe was like the first big player.

He was coming through after the World Cup.

His last stop of all these stops was VBFC.

male: Anywhere you go to in LA on a Sunday, you won't go ten miles without seeing a match on a pitch.

Adults, kids, some street soccer.

Anywhere you go in Los Angeles, anywhere, you'll see it.

Matt: I'd never played football like that before.

Fortunately, I'd tracked someone down in Koreatown who I thought might be able to tell me more.

Matt: Wow, Janella, how you doing?

Janella Hernandez: Good, it's good to see you.

Matt: Alright, let's go, yeah.

Matt: Tell me, when you think back to being a kid, how did you fall in love with footy?

Janella Hernandez: You know, I feel like I've always played street, so like, playing footy on the street was just like the way it was with like my neighborhood and just like a way of finding, like, you know, just finding myself through the ball.

I've always wanted to be part of like a true soccer league, but unfortunately, I come from a working-class family, so the cost just didn't add up.

Matt: How key is that, that sort of inaccessibility to pitches in LA to kind of your story and the story of LA soccer in general?

Janella Hernandez: I think that there's so much hidden talent in these smaller neighborhoods.

These fields are oftentimes locked, and there's no other place for people to go out and play.

And you know, like, the last thing is to jump the fence, or it's to, like, create your own space to play.

Matt: So how did you get into this pitch today?

male: I jumped it.

Matt: Is that, like, typical of LA as well?

male: Yeah, a lot of times it's--you gotta jump most places.

Most places it's not broken, there's no holes, you gotta jump it for the most part.

Matt: Yeah.

Matt: Unfortunately, a dodgy knee meant I didn't quite have it in me to clamber over the fence and join them.

However, the lads were nice enough to tip us off about a secret tournament that was happening on the outskirts of town.

And when someone says that, you've gotta go check it out, haven't you?

Matt: Paco!

Paco: How you doing?

Matt: How you doing, man?

Thanks for having us, yeah?

Paco: Of course, of course.

Come and check it out.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Paco: Oh, it's a huge soccer city.

I think it's--it's showing more now, probably because the World Cup's coming, but the underground and all this kind of lifestyle has been around for a long time.

We just have a warehouse.

We turned it into a sick little futsal court.

Plenty of people make, you know, $200, $250 a game.

Tonight it's $1500, and it was $275 to join.

If you don't get paid, like, why are you gonna go play?

That's kind of what it is, so.

♪♪♪ [people cheering] ♪♪♪ male: Soccer in LA, man.

If you could--if you could look at every nick, crack, whatever, you'll see soccer just speaking out loud, compared to any other sport here.

[cheering] [man shouting in Spanish] Matt: This has been great.

We've had a couple of beers, we've seen a fight.

It's real, it's authentic.

London doesn't have this, so I've had a great time.

Matt: Mat, when you think back to being a kid, what are your sort of first ever memories of falling in love with football?

Mathew Davis: We used to get Bundesliga highlights show at midnight on a weird channel, and I used to VHS, you know the VHS?

Set it up, and then wake up in the morning and watch the whole thing.

I coached, I owned a minor league team for a little while, and then my wife was like, you know, I just told my wife, "like, Look, you think I can make a brand out of this?

There's not really like a lifestyle brand for football."

Just started bootlegging T-shirts in my back garage, and that led into like parties, led into product.

Matt: We were talking off-camera, I'd love to hear more about these Rod Stewart games.

Mathew Davis: To play at Rod's or to play at Robbie's, all the guards come down.

We've had Ray Parlour up there, Mathieu Flamini and Joleon Lescott, and you throw football into the mix and it's very much like--yeah, it's cool.

It's really cool.

male: We live in a city where fashion comes before sport.

Kits are kind of like fashion, how they are around the world, right?

It's kind of niche, right?

If you know, you know, right?

Matt: I jumped in the car and headed over to South LA.

It was time to meet Cousin Feo.

His "Death at the Derby" project with Lord Juco combines fiery soccer derbies with hip hop beats.

♪ --arrangement with the devils, ♪ ♪ came up with the Neville's.

♪ Giggs and Nicky also, even Paul Scholes winning medals.

Matt: Hey man, you good?

Thanks for having us.

Cousin Feo: Of course, man.

Thank you guys for taking the time, you know?

Cousin Feo: Basically what I do in terms of, you know, my artistry, being a rapper, being an emcee, I took my passion for the sport and used it as a vessel.

What if I took kind of the sounds from the game and incorporated it with rapping over these raw, like, grimy underground beats, and see where it goes, you know?

Matt: Well, I see this one.

I didn't know you ever played for Galaxy, man.

Cousin Feo: Hey, you know what?

You know, Galaxy discovered me as an artist through Twitter at the time.

Reached out to me to go to the stadium actually, and they had an event like a couple weeks before the season started, for all the fans just to gather.

I was able to perform in front of like 3000, 4000 people.

Love the team, love the opportunities to grow myself even within the community itself, you know.

Matt: You went to that very first game at the Rose Bowl?

Cousin Feo: Yeah, 1996.

I remember as we were leaving, there were still cars coming in.

The Galaxy as a team, I don't think the MLS as a, you know, league expected the type of turnout that they got that day, really because of Mauricio Cienfuegos, who is a Salvadorian superstar.

If I'm the owner of the Galaxy in that moment, the future just flashed in front of my eyes, you know?

Matt: Yeah, for sure.

It kind of shows, like, LA was always ready for some soccer, wasn't it?

Cousin Feo: We were just a bomb waiting to explode.

We just needed a wick, you know?

And the Galaxy, the MLS was that wick.

♪ It's that time for some Reggiano Parmigiano.

♪ Matt: Oh my word, bro.

Look at all that.

So good.

Matt: We touched on it off-camera earlier as well, but like, America's got this pay-for-play problem really.

So it can make soccer at the top level inaccessible to so many people, and LA, because of its nature, its culture, you know, its diversity and its kind of rebelliousness as well, they've kind of formed a sort of resistance to that through this pick-up culture that you talk about.

Cousin Feo: A hundred percent.

The minute people get off of work, that's when, you know, some people head home, other people are heading to the pitch, and the pitch is cracking from, you know, 3 p.m.

till 10, 11 o'clock at night.

You got the older men's leagues going on.

You got the women's leagues going on.

You got co-ed leagues going on.

And it's definitely a counterpunch, a bit of protest.

We're gonna still enjoy the sport that we love, our way.

I definitely think we're a soccer city, 100%.

Matt: What's the earliest you've ever got up to watch Chelsea play?

male: Well, I've been on a night out and just stayed up at 4 a.m.

and watched before, but-- male: Yeah, today we're at Joxer Daly's.

They show different Arsenal games.

The vibe, good spot.

[crowd shouts] male: We're a top-down bar, N17 the Lane.

Tuesday's gonna be smashing, rammed, full of people, 6 a.m.

games, 7 a.m.

games, a couple hundred people.

Full, full, full, completely full.

[crowd cheering] female: Just awesome to connect with other women over sports.

It's cool to see us represented in LA.

female: It's soccer town.

It's great.

female: Savy King went down last year, and it was a difficult thing to watch.

Just knowing, you know, these ladies are out there just doing it is phenomenal.

Matt: So we're speaking to Julie Uhrman tomorrow.

A message you could give to her, I guess?

female: Thank you so much, her and Natalie Portman, the other founders, for the idea and the relentless hours.

We get to reap the benefits as fans.

Thank you, Julie!

Matt: Untamed Spirits.

What a lovely place to watch football.

And it may be soccer town, but until 2022, LA did not have a top-flight women's team to call their own.

That all changed when Angel City FC entered the scene.

Julie Uhrman: When you come to an Angel City match, the sound is different and everyone is cheering.

The stadium is electric.

It is loud.

It's very inclusive and diverse.

Everyone's here for the same reason, which is really supporting Angel City and by doing so, supporting women's sports.

We talk about building a dynasty on the pitch and a legacy off the pitch, and that comes with winning.

We want to continue to have that positive impact in the community, start to break away the pay-to-play model here.

If you really want to affect change, you need to have a seat at the table and build that playbook that others could follow that we're actually seeing play out today.

♪♪♪ Matt: What's a tailgate?

male: Well, a tailgate, I mean, it's like kind of a party before the game.

We come here and have a beer, chill with some friends.

Josh Lee: What's up, bro?

Matt: Thanks for having us.

Josh Lee: How are you doing?

Of course, of course, of course.

Josh Lee: We are a supporters group built for this club itself.

We were founded in 2017, built around where most of us lived at the time, in Koreatown, Los Angeles, you know?

And for anyone who may not be familiar with Koreatown, Koreatown is as Korean as it is Mexican, as it is Salvadorian, as it is American, in all the senses.

So really this idea, this ethic that LAFC says about living shoulder to shoulder, we've been doing that within a diverse group of people from the very beginning.

♪♪♪ Josh Lee: Los Angeles is a sum of its parts.

You're gonna talk to me that a Mexican family, and a Salvadorian family, and a Korean family don't have soccer allegiances?

You're out of your mind, you know?

LA is as much of a soccer city as a Barcelona, as a Madrid.

We have the people to back that up.

female: I love LAFC because of how diverse it is here.

Like, I never felt out of place and like, there's other people like me, and then there's so many other different people too.

LAFC is a great place to come if you wanna belong to a community.

male: All the other teams that have come here have all been built from other cities, like, you know, the Dodgers came from New York, you know, the Rams came back and forth from St.

Louis, and I feel like LAFC has like more of a home base because I was born and raised here.

male: LA is 100% a soccer city.

Like, the different communities here love, absolutely love football.

Matt: Can I ask you about LAFC?

Far Fashad: What about them?

Matt: Anything.

Are you willing to speak about them?

Far Fashad: Yeah, I mean, I don't have--no, I don't have a problem.

I'm a soccer fan.

Matt: Do you like them?

Far Fashad: Do I like them?

Of course not, no.

Kevin Baxter: New money versus old money.

The two sides do hate each other.

male: I think they're irrelevant.

And it's just Orange County too, you know what I mean?

It's not even really LA.

Cousin Feo: We set the standard on and off the pitch.

There's just something special about a derby and a derby day, and we finally have that.

Kevin Baxter: You have the Galaxy, the team that's been the most successful throughout the history of the league.

LAFC, during its history, has all those records for that time period.

Josh Lee: It's really only a Los Angeles story.

Matt: My time in LA was sadly coming to a close, and there was only one way I was ever gonna end.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's match day.

Let's go.

Josh Lee: What you'll hear in the stands today is this really beautiful mix of Aztec drums alongside bass drums that represent, you know, the more traditional South American supporter culture.

♪♪♪ It's a mix of the terrace culture from the UK diaspora that's here.

Only in Los Angeles can you get this kind of culture in the stadium.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Matt: Well, if you need any proof that LA was a soccer city, just look at what's going on behind me, man.

♪♪♪ [crowd cheering] ♪ I'm next up, win the game from the neck up.

♪ ♪ Left back outta left field and never let up.

♪ ♪ My head up, feelin' I'm ahead of my time.

♪ ♪ Took a trip to Fenerbahce, I was destined to shine.

♪ ♪ Been, takin free kicks that had 'em pressin' rewind.

♪ ♪ Every pitch I step on, command attention and eye.

♪ ♪ See ya, never mentioned with mine.

♪ ♪ I got the presence and pride.

♪ ♪ -- formation, still pressin' em high.

♪ ♪ Was a player for Corinthians, the sections was live.

♪ ♪ Now, that's the end of discussion.

♪ ♪ Big bags from the Russians.

♪ ♪ Because I, kick that and kick back at the function.

♪ ♪ Spit facts at the luncheons.

♪ ♪ Yeah, I did that, it was nothin', homie.

♪ ♪ Homie, I been stamped, dig stats on the subject.

♪ ♪ I used to, spin cats, but I'm over that.

♪ ♪ Was a menace with the overlap, you can quote the facts.

♪ ♪ I set the template for defensemen that be scorin' that.

♪ ♪ From the corner and they got the culture from the older cats.

♪ ♪ Yeah, cashed out in India one last time.

♪ ♪ Worldwide recognized 'cause, son got live.

♪ ♪ It's Feo.

♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ female announcer: This film was made possible by the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.