Alive and Kicking : Salsa Sees South O.C. as a Chance to Gain Solid Base for Soccer

At game time one evening last week, seated in his private corner of the elevated press box at Trabuco Hills High School, William de la Pena gazed down over rolling hills, red tile roofs and stucco-framed houses that dot the ever-expanding Saddleback Valley.

De la Pena, owner of the Salsa Professional Soccer Club, contemplates conquering this area by permanently establishing his team in Mission Viejo. He moved the club there in April and jumped to a new league after playing two seasons in the American Professional Soccer League at Cal State Fullerton.

De la Pena has lost several million dollars running the club and later this summer expects to decide if south Orange County offers the necessary fan base and financial support. If not, he will consider another move, or he might fold the team.

The Saddleback Valley seems fertile territory for a professional soccer franchise. The U.S. National Team training site is here. The nonprofit Mission Viejo Soccer Foundation, which helps youth groups raise much-needed revenue, wants to see a 10,000-seat stadium built on the football field at Saddleback College and college officials are interested.

And youth soccer is big--really big--here. More than 3,800 kids play in the American Youth Soccer Organization in Mission Viejo, according to that organization. Another 2,800 are in Laguna Niguel and nearly 2,000 play in Rancho Santa Margarita.

“It’s common knowledge that soccer seems to be the chosen game in south Orange County,” said Torrance-based Michael Hogue, Salsa director of operations who has been involved in running other soccer clubs the last two decades. “The area has the potential to support a professional soccer franchise given the right amount of time and nourishment.”

“The Doc,” as de la Pena is known, won’t say exactly how much he has lost since founding the Salsa in Montebello in 1992, but sources say it’s close to $2.5 million. He says he is prepared to spend twice that amount if he finds the right place to locate the team, but he doesn’t want to squander funds in a futile attempt to compete for the same fan base as Major League Soccer, which is set to begin play in Los Angeles next spring. Someday he hopes to compete for the same players MLS wants, but for the moment he has put the brakes on spending. The Salsa’s budget this season is about $350,000.

“Our goal is to be the top team in a top league [in L.A.],” de la Pena said. “Where that is remains to be seen.”

But de la Pena, encouraged by the prospects of a new soccer stadium, sees this part of the county as a new, potentially vital and invigorating marketplace.

“Orange County has a huge youth group that needs to be worked with,” de la Pena said. “It is a wealthy county in terms of local sponsorships that might be available, it has good weather and it has a group of knowledgeable people in soccer both from the Anglo and Latin communities.”

Born in Los Angeles, raised in Mexico City, de la Pena is an ophthalmologist and well-known pioneer in cataract surgery. He owns a chain of eye clinics mainly serving Latino communities in East Los Angeles and Santa Ana. A resident of Whittier, the bearded, bespectacled owner wanted the Salsa to play at East Los Angeles College in the APSL so he could market the team to the largely Latino communities served by his clinics. But a conflict arose over his use of the stadium at East L.A. and de la Pena opted for Cal State Fullerton over Long Beach Veterans Stadium.

“I felt Fullerton was a good option because it wasn’t too far from East L.A. and Monterey Park where Latinos could drive in to see a game,” he said. “It was also in Orange County, which has a good soccer population.”

But Fullerton is in north county. Although the Salsa drew a few crowds in the 10,000-range through heavy promotions and giveaways, management discovered that Latinos wouldn’t waste a trip to watch an American team play. Further, Fullerton was viewed as too far a drive on a hot summer afternoon for many parents of youth soccer players to the south.

“We’re a whole lot wiser today about marketing than we were three years ago,” said Salsa Coach and General Manager Rick Davis, a former national team and North American Soccer League player. “We primarily now want to target the youth market. Down here you can access it with relative ease.”

The Salsa did well on the field in its first year, advancing to the 1993 APSL championship game. Off the field, a tempest was boiling. When de la Pena heavily questioned the tactics of Coach Rildo Menezes during a 2-1 loss to Colorado, the Brazilian-born coach abruptly resigned.

Davis and de la Pena projected that major sponsors such as airlines would hop on board and provide services in exchange for trade-outs. Those expectations, perhaps a bit lofty, never materialized. Finally, the prices paid to players escalated over budget. As a result, the team’s expenses ballooned.

“We projected significant losses for the first three years,” Davis said. “We hoped we’d be in the neighborhood to break even in the fourth or fifth year, but expenditures ended up being way over what we projected and revenues were a lot less.”

Late in 1993, Davis released all players, some of them making as much as $60,000 a year.

A rebuilt Salsa with a much smaller payroll returned to Fullerton in 1994 with Davis as coach. But the team was knocked out of the playoffs by Montreal in the opening round.

Again, action off the field was sometimes more exciting than on. De la Pena met with resistance from U.S. soccer hierarchy in his attempt to get his team into the Mexican First Division. When he finally cleared what he thought was the last hurdle, he was forced by international soccer officials to schedule the games against Mexican teams as exhibitions, not league games. After only a couple of matches, the teams balked as a protest against the passage of Proposition 187, California’s anti-illegal immigration initiative. The remainder of the campaign was canceled.

Last December, de la Pena abruptly pulled the Salsa out of the APSL when he and Davis became concerned after several teams had trouble posting $100,000 performance bonds (entry fee) for the 1995 season. He entered a revamped Salsa, made up of players primarily younger than 23 years old, into the United Systems of Independent Soccer Leagues (USISL) and moved to Mission Viejo, where the team is based at the former World Cup training center.

Davis points out that de la Pena, happy with his team’s 9-3 start, still holds Los Angeles-area franchise rights in the APSL until the end of September and that the Salsa could very well be back in the league, which now calls itself the A League, in 1996. Other options, if the club does not fold, include remaining in the USISL or forming a hybrid league made up of some well-stocked USISL teams.

But can the Salsa, which is averaging about 1,000 spectators, carve a profitable niche in south Orange County by wowing all the youth leagues? The key could be the construction of a soccer stadium.

“Putting it bluntly,” Davis said, “the availability of a professional soccer stadium would probably mean the difference between the Salsa remaining [in Mission Viejo] or going back to Fullerton or somewhere else.”

Allan Gallup, founder of the Mission Viejo Soccer Foundation that is pushing for such a stadium by the end of the decade, says his organization wants the community to benefit from any professional sports franchise.

“We are very particular with who we work with,” Gallup said. “We live here and when any program is over and done with, we still live here.”

Jack McIntyre, Saddleback College director of marketing and development, said preliminary talks about a stadium have been well received, but much more talking is needed.

“I would say there is a good deal of excitement any time the college can get involved in a project that would be of mutual benefit to the community,” he said.

Lurking as a possible stumbling block is MLS. There is concern that the L.A. market cannot support two professional soccer franchises. MLS will have a leg up in exposure when it begins because it has a television deal with ESPN and ABC. The APSL, should the Salsa choose to return, has a deal with Prime Sports, but USISL has no TV deals.

Finally, if MLS opts to play at Fullerton, will that draw fans from the Salsa?

At least one soccer expert thinks the Southland would benefit from healthy competition.

“The more you have, the better it is for everybody,” said former national team Coach Bora Milutinovic, an acquaintance of de la Pena’s and a regular visitor at Salsa games. “The more possible exposure for soccer, the better.”