"The game is not our game yet in the U.S.," says Luchi Gonzalez, San Jose Earthquakes academy director and former U.S. assistant coach. "But it will be our game one day." For California, that day might be arriving faster than most Americans realize.
When the U.S. take on Bosnia in a World Cup knockout match in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, it will be the third of a possible four World Cup games played in California for the home side. No other state has built this kind of case for soccer's place in American life — and no other World Cup window has offered this kind of platform to prove it.
California's soccer footprint is already bigger than you think
The numbers back it up. California has four MLS clubs, three NWSL teams, and five USL sides — more professional soccer teams than any other U.S. state by a distance. The San Diego Wave lead the NWSL. Orange County top the USL West. And the Earthquakes are level at the summit of the MLS Western Conference for the first time in 14 years, winning nine of their first ten games this season — an MLS record under Bruce Arena.
Arena, a four-time MLS Coach of the Year who took the U.S. to the 2002 World Cup quarter-finals, has also brought in Timo Werner — Champions League winner, former Chelsea forward — who has four goals in seven appearances since joining in January. The Earthquakes aren't just riding World Cup hype. They were already moving.
About 40% of California's population is Latino, drawn from countries where football isn't a sport — it's a religion. That demographic base isn't incidental. It's structural. Gonzalez describes the area as having a "soccer-rich" population shaped by Latin American roots, which means the player pipeline, the attendance, and the cultural buy-in are already there in ways that don't exist in most of the country.
What six World Cup games could actually change
Gonzalez is clear-eyed about what hosting does beyond the spectacle. Selling home-grown players to European clubs generates revenue that funds academies, improves facilities, and keeps the development cycle turning. A World Cup in the backyard accelerates all of that — parents investing more time, kids dreaming bigger, clubs building better infrastructure.
Earthquakes midfielder Niko Tsakiris put it plainly: "Soccer has been a thing here and it's still continuing to grow." Burkina Faso international Ousseni Bouda, scouted by the Earthquakes at nearby Stanford, added that the World Cup will pull in fans who were already close to converting.
The U.S. odds to advance deep into this tournament get more interesting with every home game — crowd advantage in a World Cup is not nothing, and California crowds for this team have been loud. If the Americans keep winning, California gets to host the climax of something genuinely historic: a U.S. team making its deepest World Cup run since 2002.
Gonzalez calls it a "calm excitement." Given what's already in place here, that might be the most telling detail of all.
