The U.S. beat Paraguay 4-1 Friday night, in what was perhaps one of the most exciting closers to a game since the Dodgers World Series win last year. That goal – was all anyone was talking about Friday night.
West Hollywood watched from Plummer Park, with their first installment of the City’s Fan Zones and folks kept showing up through the weekend.
Both days drew crowds, with Friday’s America vs. Paraguay game drawing the bigger turnout of the two. Fans and families spread out on blankets, pulled up to picnic tables set up and let the big screen do the rest.
Friday night ended with Gio Reyna scoring that epic goal in the final seconds of stoppage time. It was the kick of the game with only seconds to spare.
“I don’t know if anyone expected that to happen,” said Emily O’Hanlon, a WeHo resident we caught up Friday. She came with her bestie, William Lenz, and her pup in tow. “I think he [Reyna] may have just proved himself a little bit to the team.”
Reyna has been a divisive figure in American soccer since a reported fallout with then-coach Gregg Berhalter at the 2022 World Cup. O’Hanlon told us the event felt like a “great partnership between the City and the neighborhood, and was just good, clean, fun.”
Saturday brought more World Cup action at the park. Brazil and Morocco played to a 1-1 draw, with Vinícius Júnior equalizing after Morocco’s Ismael Saibari opened the scoring. Scotland beat Haiti 1-0.
Mark Bell DJed the breaks, spinning funk, soul, disco, and house music. “It looks great,” Bell said of the turnout. “This is impressive.” Kevin Repich came in from Hollywood on Saturday and told us he appreciated the family setup. “I thought it was really family friendly, and it was nice to watch a game outdoors,” Repich said. “Would have been nice if there was a little bit more shade towards the beginning of it, but it got nice towards the end.” Garrett Szafman had been looking for exactly this. “We love soccer, so we were looking for something exactly like this,” Szafman said, “and it just fell into our laps.” “It was so much fun to have something nice and convenient in our community,” Szafman said.
The community thread ran through both days. We caught Priya and Shrey, who live near Kings Road, as the game wrapped and they were on their walk back home. They said it was the standout part of the weekend. “The best part was the sense of community,” Shrey said. “We were sitting at a table with a bunch of people we didn’t know and everyone was talking and joking around. It just felt like we were all part of the West Hollywood community hanging out.” Priya said she’d show up regardless of where that day’s games were being played. “You don’t need the games to be in LA,” she said. “Connecting with other people is a big part of it. If you go to something enough times you’ll start to see the same faces. I would love to go every weekend — I wish they were doing one next week. Throughout the summer, it’d be a lot of fun.”
They’re already planning on WeHo Park. “Connecting with other people is a big part of it,” Shrey said. “If you go to something enough times you’ll start to see the same faces. I would love to go every weekend.”
Next up — the West Hollywood Park fan zone runs June 25 through June 28. That one will have a beer garden and the U.S. premiere of Discofoot, a full soccer match where every player must dance instead of run. Two teams of 12 compete for goals and style points both, with a DJ, one referee, and three dance judges running the show. Choreographers Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley of France’s Ballet de Lorraine created it in 2016. West Hollywood gets the first U.S. performance. Vendors, performers, and volunteers can still apply at fanzones.weho.org.
Bell, who is from England, said, “I can confirm that football [soccer] is alive and well in the United States of America.”
Re: title of the article….In the US, it is NOT called “football.” It is called soccer.
I do not care that the rest of the world calls soccer football – good for them. But, in the US we have an entirely different version/sport of “football.” Thus, when discussing the sport in the US (only), it ought to be referred to as “soccer” to avoid confusion.