Swanson: Capistrano FC tries something new – and old – by going pro

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — I’m sorry, but I was unfamiliar with your game – or, at least, with breadth and scope of your beautiful game, if you’re a soccer player in the United States.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the World Cup. Take me out to a good high school soccer match any day. I’ve written about MLS, NWSL, CONCACAF and NCAA action. My kid is in AYSO. His buddies are on club teams. The neighbors play Sunday pickup.

But only lately did I realize that was scratching the surface, and just how much soccer is happening between the domestic big leagues and college ball. That there are thousands more footballers among us, plying their trade and honing their skills, competing. Seriously competing. And that the pool of players is growing, that pathway widening along with a loose network of leagues.

Makes you think the United States is a soccer nation. Or that it could be – should be?

There’s the United Soccer League, which oversees three men’s leagues and two women’s leagues and counts more than 200 clubs among its membership. The National Premier Soccer League, with 90-plus teams. MLS Next Pro, the 29-team league (27 reserve sides of MLS clubs and two independents) associated with the sport’s literal major league. And the National Independent Soccer Association, which operates an amateur division that’s more than 380 clubs strong and, more recently, an entry-level professional division.

That’s where the Capistrano Football Club – aka Capo FC – has landed, with NISA Pro.

Think of it as a little taste of Europe in San Juan Capistrano, this club doing it the old way – a whole new way, over here.

AN EVOLUTION

What started in 2006 as a modest, three youth-team endeavor, the club has grown into a program – comparatively affordable still, kids pay $795 a year – with 30 youth teams, and senior squads competing in the US Open Cup, USL League Two, the USL Women’s league and, as of this spring, NISA Pro. A women’s pro team is set to debut in 2025.

“We have,” said Peter Carey, Capo FC’s president and club director, “a legit pathway to pro in our community.”

So a 7-year-old could join Capo FC, learn the basics, move with the ball at his feet through the club ranks, make his high school team and then a college team and eventually play pro soccer for … Capo FC.

And from there? Possibly this Division 3 team will be a springboard.

“This is obviously pro, the next step to going even bigger,” said Miles Hodgson, a 24-year-old defender who said he started dreaming of a pro soccer career when he was playing at Millikan High in Long Beach.

“That’s the ultimate reward,” said Carey, who said Capo has previously helped propel two players onto the Galaxy II roster and three others onto European teams. “For them to sign on a big team, to know we were part of that, that we helped them get there.”

Fielding a pro team wasn’t something anyone with Capo envisioned until recently. But the robust organization they built fits NISA’s game plan: “True community clubs like Capo FC should not be ignored in the professional landscape in the United States,” NISA’s executive vice president Josh Prutch said when Capo announced it was going pro late last year.

So on a rainy evening in January, I caught a tryout where Carey – a former Marine who insists his players always say hello and goodbye to one another but never talk back to an official on the pitch – was looking for talent to “sprinkle our pro team up,” as he put it.

“We’re trying to keep as many of our core guys who have been with us, we’re gonna go out there and try to shake the tree, see if we can get some Ws,” he said before the season began. (Thus far, Capo is 1-2-2 and sitting in third in NISA’s four-team Western Conference.)

During that scrimmage, I planted myself beside Pablo Martinez on the sideline and picked his soccer-obsessed brain. A 25-year-old attacking midfielder, he was among the players auditioning for a role with Capo, and he told me he was impressed by the club’s evolution into something that felt to him like what soccer fans in his mom’s native England experience.

“In England, you have countless leagues and teams,” said Martinez, who has played there and also for professional academies in his dad’s native Uruguay, and who, in mid-March, inked a contract with Capo.

“Whether it’s a Premier League team where you have 50,000 fans or it’s a local side where they have 2 or 3,000 fans on a Saturday for a match, those clubs all started with their neighborhoods. People’s great-grandfathers have been going to games for the last 150 years – in America, you don’t have that.

“Every club here is, I wouldn’t say artificial, but it comes from nowhere. We’ve got 32 NFL teams for an entire country, so it’s not as closely connected. So for a team like Capo to come through is pretty great because they’ve had a presence in the area for a while as a youth club, so a lot of the community is tied in with the club already…

“This isn’t the highest level, this isn’t the Premier League, but maybe you can inspire somebody to want to pursue football (he means the universal “football”) a little more than they want to pursue baseball or whatever it is. The more you get kids playing, the more you get people involved in the sport, the better the growth.”

Thirteen-year-old Ronan Hallinan is one of those kids.

When he’s not playing for Capo, he’s cheering its pro contingent – which includes his coach, 28-year-old Hevany Ramos Mota, a striker from Cape Verde who, like many of his teammates on the pro roster, works with the club’s youngsters.

Ronan and his dad, Eugene Hallinan, were among the nearly 200 family and friends bundled up on the metal bleachers on a Friday night at JSerra Catholic High, watching Capo lose 2-0 to Irvine Zeta FC on May 17. The teams will meet again Sunday, an opportunity, Carey said, for this Capo team he’s coaching to show what it’s learned about playing with more consistent focus.

Tickets were $15 to get into last week’s match, which began with both teams walking single file onto the pitch, Capo’s players accompanied by members of Capo’s 10U and 11U girls’ teams, like you see before big-time competitions. These girls spent the rest of the match chasing down out-of-bounds balls and returning them to their designated spot on sideline – and staying quite busy, because the action was frenetic, without a lot of time to breathe or organize.

Decked out in a Capo jersey, beanie and scarf, Ronan watched intently, cheering players by name: “One day, when I’m older and I’m finished with college, or even when I’m in college, I’d love to be out here,” he said.

These guys aren’t exactly being paid handsomely (around the league, NISA Pro players earn $800-$3,000 per month), but they’re enjoying the perks of a professional setting.

NISA has standards to ensure matches have all the details you might overlook, at least until you’re playing in a league that doesn’t mandate host teams provide a bench or corner flags or water, for example. Plus, Capo’s players told me, this is the first time many of them are being provided with scheduled gym time and ready, regular access to a physical therapist – expertise and availability that is, at this point, largely being donated, Carey said.

They also appreciate the constant communication from the coaching staff (also volunteers), how seriously everyone takes training, and, yes, the challenge they’re getting from professional opponents. The experience is making them better.

“I thought I was OK back then, but I feel better now,” said Sergio Montes, a 26-year-old midfielder who works in construction and who started with Capo when he was about 10 and went on to play at Irvine Valley College and Westcliff University. “It’s just getting older, getting wiser; I know I don’t have to sprint everywhere, I know where to be. It’s beautiful.”

PLAYING IT FORWARD

“I’d say America is a little bit behind, but the growth, as you can see here in San Juan, is pretty remarkable,” said Parker Scalzo, a 24-year-old who started playing with Capo as a kid before going on to earn All-PacWest Conference recognition for three consecutive seasons as a forward for Point Loma Nazarene.

“I think in the next 10 years you’ll start to see a lot of teams come through the ranks,” Scalzo said. “Especially as more pro leagues develop and we refine our roles. It took Europe a long time to get to where they are now, and maybe once we establish a promotion and relegation here, or some kind of system where it’s not all about how much money you’ve got …”

Perhaps someday there will be solidarity payments to compensate grassroots American clubs doing the developing – but promotion and relegation? Here?

I can’t see it.

What I can see is homegrown programs capturing their communities’ imaginations, promoting hard work and belief and inspiring generations of soccer lovers to play on, maybe even to go pro, and always to pay it forward.