Alive and Kicking

By GRAHAME L. JONES

May 16, 1997 12 AM PT

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Sun-bleached and coyote-gnawed, the bones of Southern California’s long-extinct professional soccer teams lie scattered across the landscape.

Count them now, before yellowed newspaper clippings from long-forgotten games turn to dust.

The Los Angeles Wolves. Los Angeles Toros. Los Angeles Aztecs. Los Angeles Skyhawks. California Surf. California Sunshine. Los Angeles Lazers. Los Angeles Heat.

Gone, one and all.

But remembered by some.

Certainly by Danny Villanueva, the former Los Angeles Ram and Dallas Cowboy kicker.

And by Daniel L. Villanueva, his son and the president, general manager and--like his father--part owner of the Los Angeles Galaxy.

This city, it seems, is unable to go for long without a professional soccer team. There has been one here on and off for the better part of 30 years, ever since Jack Kent Cooke’s Wolves rolled into town in 1967.

And rolled out again in 1969.

The trick the Villanuevas and their 15 fellow owners--including lead investor Marc Rapaport--are trying to learn now is how to keep a team here. Permanently. Or at least what passes for permanently in Southern California.

So far, they are off to a promising start. Last year, in Major League Soccer’s inaugural season, the Galaxy led the league in attendance, averaging 28,916 at the Rose Bowl, and reached the MLS championship game.

All of that is a far cry from the point more than two decades ago when the Villanueva family first ventured into the sport.

The elder Villanueva, who played five seasons for the Rams and four for the Cowboys, started the ball rolling, acquiring Spanish-language rights to broadcast World Cup games in 1974 and doing so again in 1978, 1982 and 1986.

It became a family endeavor.

“That was [young] Danny’s baptism,” the elder Villanueva said. “He was the promoter in Seattle and Portland and Las Vegas. I mean, he was in high school, walking around with briefcases full of money after closed-circuit matches. And I sent my wife to another city and my brothers and sisters to other cities. A handful of us did the whole of the United States and Canada.”

Locally, games were shown at such venues as the Forum, the Sports Arena and the Shrine Auditorium. Overall, it was a complicated undertaking but a financial success. As were the two dozen or so international games the Villanuevas put on at the Coliseum.

So when Alan Rothenberg--who had been introduced to the sport by Cooke in 1967--offered to sell the Los Angeles Aztecs to Villanueva in 1979, he was ready to buy, backed by the financial clout and soccer connections of Mexican sports and communications entrepreneur Emilio Ezcarraga.

For the elder Villanueva, it was as much an investment of the heart as of the pocketbook. “We come from a culture that is so passionate about this game that it’s hard for us to understand why the whole world isn’t passionate,” he said.

“We just don’t understand. Here’s this incredible, marvelous sport with no timeouts and no huddles where you plan every play. In soccer, you have to coordinate, you have to think. You don’t have linemen who never see a ball in their whole lives. Everybody sees the ball. It’s such a beautiful game, you just say, ‘Why isn’t the whole world into it?’ ”

But soccer has been and continues to be a tough sell in the United States.

The collapse of the North American Soccer League in 1984, and the consequent demise of the Aztecs, set the sport back considerably, and it was not until a decade later and the success of World Cup ‘94, that its fortunes revived.

In 1981, fresh out of Harvard Law School, Rapaport went to work as an associate in Rothenberg’s law firm.

Fast forward 13 years. Rothenberg is president of the United States Soccer Federation, has just staged one of the most successful World Cup tournaments in history and is ready to launch a professional league.

Rapaport has enjoyed investment success of his own and, offered the opportunity by Rothenberg to run the Los Angeles team, accepts.

“I was convinced after looking at the numbers and talking to people that there was an opportunity for a soccer league [to succeed], looking at the World Cup attendance and the youth soccer participation and international games and television interest and all those kinds of things,” Rapaport said.

As a result, he put together an investment group of about 20 under the umbrella of Los Angeles Soccer Partners.

“The ownership is a group of individuals from all over the country,” the younger Villanueva said. “We’ve got a few East Coast fellows, some guys in the Pacific Northwest, but the majority of us are here in Southern California. We’ve got everything from advertising executives to owners of grocery chains to professional investors.

“The lead investor and the common tie to all of us is Marc Rapaport. He was the one who assembled the group. He went out and got everybody. He was the one who initially was committed financially.”

Villanueva, like his father, is a fan of the sport, but as the Galaxy’s general manager and part owner, he also sees its investment potential.

“I started playing soccer even before I started playing American football,” the Stanford graduate said. “I’ve always loved the game. Any time I was studying abroad [in Spain and Mexico], I was playing soccer. Even when I came home and was playing rugby, in the off-season I was training with the soccer team.”

After interviewing and rejecting more than a dozen applicants for the general manager’s position, Rapaport called the elder Villanueva, who recommended his son.

“The passion certainly attracted me to operate the team, but it was the [MLS] business plan that attracted me to invest my money,” the younger Villanueva said.

From the 29th floor of a Century City office building that houses the family business, the two Villanuevas, father and son, can look out over the city and at a soccer past that stretches almost a quarter-century.

But it is the future that interests them most.

The elder Villanueva speaks of the sport and its potential in Los Angeles in almost Biblical terms.

“Danny and I were talking about it at lunch,” he said. “What we have now that we didn’t have then. We have TV coverage and we have sponsors. Before, it was the money of the people [fans] who believed. The small choir that we’d preach to every week.

“The lesson that soccer has to learn now is how do you build your congregation and spread that gospel to new generations.”

The Galaxy has set about doing so by building a team that reflects the city’s ethnic mix. Hence the presence of Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos, Salvadoran midfielder Mauricio Cienfuegos and Guatemalan midfielder Martin Machon.

In years to come, other Mexican and Central American players are likely to join the mix.

From an attendance standpoint, having a soccer team in Los Angeles that plays in the Mexican first division would be virtually a license to print money, but the idea has been rejected.

“I tried to buy a Mexican team to put it here and I ran into an incredible firefight,” the elder Villanueva said. “Both federations [the U.S. and Mexican] told me to catch a cab. So I’ve been blown up bilingually.”

Which leaves MLS--and avoiding the mistakes made by the Wolves, Toros, Aztecs, Skyhawks, Surf, Sunshine, Lazers and Heat.

“It’s that old thing,” the elder Villanueva said. “If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it.

“The thing that soccer has to avoid at all costs is the saying that soccer is the sport of the future.

“There comes a time when it has to begin to fulfill its promise or pretty soon the credibility is lost.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MLS Owners

* Chicago (TBA)--Philip F. Anschutz (Kings).

* Colorado Rapids--Anschutz.

* Columbus Crew--Lamar Hunt (Kansas City Chiefs).

* Dallas Burn--League owned.

* Kansas City Wizards--Hunt.

* Galaxy--Los Angeles Soccer Partners