Futbol Kicks the Dickens Out of a Storm : Championship at overflowing Coliseum shows soccer’s potential in Southern California
The organizers did their best to keep it a secret, but 88,155 people still showed up at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum last Sunday to watch a futbol game. An additional 20,000 fans were turned away for lack of seats.
It was not the kind of football you’ll see this Sunday at the Super Bowl. It was a soccer match between Mexico and Brazil for the Gold Cup championship. The Coliseum game culminated a 10-day tournament involving nine national teams, including the United States. Other games were played at Anaheim Stadium and San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.
Considering that the event was so poorly organized and U.S. news media rarely covers world-class soccer (one exception being last year’s World Cup, with the final played at the Rose Bowl), the Gold Cup tourney demonstrated the resource waiting to be tapped in Southern California. Professional soccer deserves first-rate promotion and general acceptance.
The weather was unusually cold and rainy last Sunday, and for fans simply getting to the stadium through creeping traffic was a world-class achievement itself. The LAPD traffic division, it seems, underestimated the drawing power of soccer in Los Angeles. The Coliseum, however, profited handsomely, netting nearly $240,000 in rent and concession shares for Sunday’s game alone, and the state gained revenues from the nearby parking lots.
For the future, note, please, that there are now more soccer players in Southern California than there are players of American-style football. Worldwide, there are more than 40 million people playing organized soccer in 191 countries. Clearly, soccer is a big league sport, even if folks in this country are just starting to realize it.
In April, a pro league named Major League Soccer will begin play in the United States, with a team, the Galaxy, based in Los Angeles. And if anyone doubts soccer has a potentially prosperous future here, just remember the crowd that showed up Sunday. Sloppy work: Mexicans and Brazilians mix it up before 88,155 wet fans.
