How the 1994 World Cup Helped Spark Soccer’s Rise in the Bay Area

“It was fantastic to see the turnout for all of these games and to see how much support we got from our home fans,” Cobi Jones, who played for the men’s team at the time, said in an interview.

As the current squad advances and gears up for a knockout game at the temporarily renamed Levi’s Stadium on July 1, Jones said the reaction from fans all those years ago showed the sport was “building” in the U.S., and laid the groundwork for the event’s popularity today.

“I would say that ‘94 team was the foundation for everything going forward,” he said.

Long before the games could be played at Stanford Stadium, an aging facility built in 1921, it had to be prepared to host professional soccer matches.

The job was a big undertaking, and for Ray Purpur, who was hired in January 1994 as a deputy director of athletics overseeing facilities, it was a feat he won’t forget.

“I’m glad I didn’t realize everything that had to go into it, or I may not have made it,” Purpur said with a chuckle during an interview in his office. “Stanford Stadium was almost a perfect candidate on paper. There was a lot of seats, there was a whole lot of parking, the field was an incredible field.”

But some things needed upgrades, like old wooden seating that needed to be removed and replaced with more comfortable metal-clad seats. The press box also needed a major overhaul to accommodate an influx of media, and much like today’s game, FIFA had specifications for the playing field.

“And they, kind of late in the game, decided that the crown [the rise in the center of the field] was too much, so we went in, and we scalped the crown off of it and flattened the field just slightly,” Purpur said.

Once the games were underway, he said the massive crowds were something he had never witnessed.

“I hadn’t been to a game that big before. There were very few photos of Stanford football being sold out like that,” he said. “And every seat was full.”

Michael Mastrocola, a San José native and soccer fan, joined the USA94 organizing committee in the Bay Area, which helped to get Stanford selected as a host site.

He said the pieces for a dramatic, entertaining game between the U.S. and Brazil were already in place, as the Brazilian team’s World Cup base camp was in Los Gatos.

Diehard supporters of the team flooded the small South Bay town.

“When Brazil came to Los Gatos, it was insane. Everything was yellow and green. They were samba [dancing] all through the streets of Los Gatos, and they really lit the city up,” he said.

On Independence Day, the gameplay and the Stanford venue didn’t disappoint.

“Everywhere you went, it was red, white and blue mixed in with the sea of the Sambas, of course,” he said, referring to U.S. and Brazil supporters, filling 84,000 seats. “It was electric.”

“When they introduced the players, you could just see the glow on people’s faces,” he said. “I remember walking out looking at the turf and the turf was like a carpet. You know, it was perfectly green and bright and manicured.”

International professional soccer was still “a baby brother to football and basketball and Super Bowls,” Mastrocola said.

It wasn’t lost on the U.S. players that a strong showing against a three-time World Cup champion like Brazil could boost their credibility on an international stage.

“We were weathering the storm,” Jones said, recalling the matchup and some of Brazil’s best players. “Because they had such talent in the Romários, the Bebetos, the Dungas all over the field.”

Ultimately, Brazil won the game, scoring a goal late in the match. But Mastrocola said the U.S. team proved themselves.

“They had good coaching. They had great excitement and enthusiasm,” he said. “They wanted to make the USA proud, and they did.”

But the rise in soccer professionalization and interest domestically has also tracked with the increasing price of admission for major tournaments like the World Cup.

Admission to the group stage games for the current World Cup generally costs fans a minimum of several hundred dollars per ticket, and tickets to the later stages and final matches are akin to buying seats at the Super Bowl.

Tickets for the U.S. game on July 1 are currently reselling on the FIFA official marketplace for a minimum of several thousand dollars, and listing as high as more than $20,000.

“It really is ring-fenced around those who can afford these kinds of very high prices,” said Matthew Atencio, a professor of kinesiology and co-director of the Center for Sport and Social Justice at California State University East Bay. “So many of your kids in the Bay Area who love the game or might be interested or curious about the matches that are being hosted are not able to go to those, and I’m disappointed in that aspect.”

Atencio drove down from Washington state to see Brazil take on Cameroon at Stanford in 1994. Tickets were less than $100, he said.

For young fans like Atencio and his friends, who played soccer at the time, those in-person experiences with the game were inspirational and influential.

“That was a real catalyst to us still wanting to be part of the game. And it drove us to keep playing, it drove us to keep coaching,” he said.

He’d go on to play on teams and in leagues around the world. He noted players now have many more avenues to play domestically, whether in college, academies, or semi-professionally in various leagues that were not around in the ‘90s.

Mastrocola, who sold ticket and hospitality packages around the World Cup in 1994, said he’s happy soccer has taken off, but sad to see prices shooting up so high.

“The World Cup has become quite corporate,” he said. “You can tell by the price of tickets, it’s not for the fan, it doesn’t seem like it’s for the fans anymore.”

Atencio said he’s encouraged to see how community-based organizations have stepped up with grassroots soccer programs to help sustain the sport for youth and in lower-income communities, such as Soccer Without Borders, Street Soccer USA and 3v3 soccer tournaments.

“I feel like they’re really on the line of how this sport can be for the masses, for the people, and especially for people who simply can’t afford to be part of a pay-to-play system,” he said.

KQED’s Keith Mizuguchi and Alex Gonzalez contributed to this report.