ANALYSIS : Soccer Enters Final Frontier : World Cup: The biggest game will be played in the biggest available stadium in the country with the biggest possibilities. Is this a Hollywood ending, or what?

For the second time in a decade, greater Los Angeles is about to become the world sports capital.

The international soccer federation, FIFA, is expected to announce after a meeting of its organizing committee Monday at Zurich, Switzerland, that the Rose Bowl has been selected to stage eight games, including one semifinal, the third-place game and the final, in the 1994 World Cup, 10 years after the Los Angeles area played host to the Summer Olympics.

The final between Argentina and West Germany in the most recent World Cup, in 1990 at Rome, was watched on television by an estimated 1.06 billion. That is evidence, FIFA officials contend, that the World Cup is the world’s most popular single-sport event.

In terms of worldwide interest, they also claim at least equal footing with the Summer Olympics. Although that is more difficult to document, there is no question that the World Cup is unparalleled for the passion it inspires.

Soccer is the No. 1 sport in many countries. Stories of hungry American tourists failing to get service in a restaurant in any one of them while a World Cup game is on television are so numerous that it is no longer a phenomenon but a cliche.

But because neither that interest nor passion exists on any significant level in the United States, it perhaps is necessary to examine a few facts that virtually any schoolchild in Europe or South America already knows.

The 1994 World Cup, the 15th since 1930, actually kicked off this spring, when national teams from 136 countries in six regions began qualifying rounds. After 18 months and 582 games, 22 teams will emerge to join the defending champion, Germany, and the host, the United States, in a 52-game tournament that will determine a world championship, June 17-July 17, 1994 in nine U.S. cities.

The very idea that this should have to be explained on these shores causes much gnashing of teeth among the sport’s traditionalists, particularly the Europeans, who would have preferred for the World Cup to be almost anywhere else.

They are appalled at the lack of coverage by the U.S. media of one of the world’s two or three most prestigious tournaments, the European Championships, which end tonight in Sweden with the final between Germany and Denmark. Likewise, they were incredulous that the U.S. national team’s astonishing victories over Ireland and Portugal and a tie with Italy in the recent U.S. Cup tournament received so little attention in the United States compared to elsewhere.

FIFA officials, however, look at the United States not as an untamable wilderness but as a last frontier, the only remaining area of the world not infused with the religion of soccer. Contributing to their missionary zeal is the expectation that hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. sponsorship and television eventually will be available to FIFA if soccer becomes a major American sport. As an investment in that future, they were willing to accept a pittance, $11 million, from ABC and ESPN for the television rights to the 1994 World Cup.

The traditionalists, though, again are wary, recognizing from American television’s involvement in the Olympics and other sporting events that the more it pays, the more influence it has on how the games are played.

But even some of them, in the wake of an epidemic of lackluster games that seems to have lifted--at least temporarily--during the final week of the European Championships, admit that changes in the sport are necessary and that some fresh ideas are required, even if they come from the United States.

For the first time, soccer is forced to compete with other sports in some countries because of the influx of independent television networks. Those, in quest of programming, are broadcasting other sports, particularly basketball. Some people even suggest that Michael Jordan is as well known in Europe as Marco Van Basten.

Marco Who? you say.

L.A. lawyer Alan Rothenberg, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation and chairman of the U.S. organizing committee for the World Cup, hopes that Americans will know the great Dutch forward, along with the sport’s other superstars, by 1994, when, he predicts, every game--at least after the first round--will be sold out.

He said this week by telephone from Sweden that he believes sellouts are virtually guaranteed for the Rose Bowl, which had the three largest crowds ever for soccer in the United States during the 1984 Summer Olympics.

That experience, above all else, earned the Rose Bowl the privilege of staging the coveted World Cup championship game, which has been held outside a nation’s capital only once, in Munich, West Germany, in 1974.

Cynics will suggest that soccer attracted so many spectators to the Rose Bowl in 1984 because tickets were cheap and available, which was not the case at most venues for people who caught the Olympic fever at the last minute and decided they had to see an event, any event.

But the Rose Bowl had other advantages, not the least of which is a capacity of 102,083. That’s 16,000 seats more than at the second-largest stadium, Stanford’s, and at least 25,000 more than average for the nine venues. That factor is extremely important to the U.S. organizing committee because most of its revenues will come from the live gate.

FIFA could not have cared less about that because it does not share in those revenues, preferring that the final be awarded to a shiny, new stadium like the ones that were constructed for the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

Its first choice was Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium, the jewel of soccer stadiums in the United States, but it was not available for as much time as required for the World Cup because of a conflict with the schedule of the expansion baseball team, the Florida Marlins.

A new stadium proposed for Washington would have been FIFA’s second choice, but there still are no guarantees that it will be completed--or even started--by the summer of 1994.

FIFA loves New York, but the Meadowlands does not have a standard size soccer field. It is sufficient for preliminary games, even the other semifinal, but not for the final.

So FIFA finally gave in to the Angelenos who hold most of the power positions within the Century City-based U.S. organizing committee--Rothenberg, Scott LeTellier, the chief operating officer; Charles Kenney, the chief administrative officer, and Ross Berlin, the venue chairman.

Their only hurdle was to generate the same sort of enthusiasm in Los Angeles that they have for the city. They had an unwavering ally in Mayor Tom Bradley, who got religion when he attended the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

But Rothenberg said that the riots this spring gave the city a renewed sense of urgency, born of its desire to repair its image internationally. There also is the matter of perhaps as much as $1 billion in economic impact that will be generated by the eight games in Pasadena. The marriage of the World Cup and Rebuild L.A. became official when Peter Ueberroth joined the organizing committee’s board of directors.

As for the more ethereal rewards, Rothenberg said that he anticipates a “tremendous international festival atmosphere” in Los Angeles during the eight games, particularly the final week, when a semifinal, the third-place game and the final are scheduled for the Rose Bowl.

On the day before the final, Rothenberg said that he can foresee a “super soccer Saturday” that would include the third-place game as well as a shootout among the sport’s top players and perhaps even an old-timers’ game featuring Pele and Franz Beckenbauer.

If very many people here say “Who?” when those names are mentioned, then perhaps the traditionalists are correct when they say that soccer is the sport of the future in the United States--and always will be.

1994 World Cup

PROPOSED SITES

* Opening ceremony and opening game: Chicago’s Soldier Field.

* First round: Four games at each of eight stadiums, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena; Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto; the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.; RFK Stadium in Washington; Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich.; the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., and three more at Soldier Field.

* Second round: One game in each stadium except for the Silverdome.

* Quarterfinals: Palo Alto, Dallas, Foxboro, East Rutherford.

* Semifinals: Pasadena and East Rutherford.

* Third Place: Pasadena.

* Final: Pasadena.