Alan Rothenberg says 1980 LA Olympics, not 1994, was US soccer’s turning point

Alan Rothenberg says the moment soccer truly began in the United States came in 1980, when he volunteered to organise men’s soccer for the Los Angeles Olympics — a view that rejects the common notion that the 1994 World Cup was the game’s inflection point. A lifelong Los Angeles resident and sports fan, Rothenberg told how he knew people in the IOC and was effectively assigned soccer.

He admitted he wasn’t a soccer expert — “I knew there was something called soccer that they played over there [outside of the U.S.]. And I had heard of Pele,” he said — and used the 1982 World Cup in Spain as a crash course in how the sport and its fans operated. The Olympic tournament posed new questions because 1980 was the first year the IOC allowed professionals in the Games.

Rothenberg and his team set rules accordingly, ensuring the Olympic soccer competition would be under-23 only, a move meant to prevent full-strength Soviet sides from dominating — “such were the fears that the Soviet Union…would come to the United States and claim gold (it worked),” the account says.

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