Longtime Soccer America contributor Scott French grew up and lives in Orange County —his parents grew up in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood — and began playing soccer at age 9 in 1971, the year AYSO arrived in Orange County. He began writing for the biweekly Orange County News at 16, then joined the Long Beach Press-Telegram staff the following year, when he was a senior at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove. He graduated with honors as a communications major from Cal State Fullerton, where he served as executive editor, sports editor and arts editor of the Daily Titan. After two decades at the Press-Telegram, he joined Soccer America as a senior editor, and subsequently was assistant sports editor at the Los Angeles Daily News, managing editor at MajorLeagueSoccer Magazine, and senior writer at FourFourTwo USA. He’s covered three men’s World Cups, two women’s World Cups, two Olympics, written about soccer for myriad publications, and contributed to three books on soccer and sportswriting. He also covers high school sports, which he calls the “purest” and “most rewarding” experience a sportswriter can have.

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Los Angeles has been home to every World Cup final staged in the United States — Brazil’s penalty kicks victory over Italy in 1994; the U.S. women’s legendary 1999 triumph, also on PKs, also at the Rose Bowl; and Germany’s 2003 overtime win against Sweden’s women down in Carson — and so we’re a little bummed that this year’s trophy-decider is way off in New Jersey.

Yeah, we’ve got two of the United States’ group games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, June 12 against Paraguay and June 25 against Turkey, but only three games after the first stage and none following the quarterfinals. Oh, well, them’s the breaks. It’ll be quite the party here regardless, with a whole lot of rooting interests, Mexico and South Korea most of all, and there will be plenty of parties across this great expanse — some official, more not so much — to cheer them all on.

We’ll have nearly a month of games, eight in all, and days between to cruise through the city and beyond. There’s lots to do and see — we’ll get to that shortly.

Inglewood is in the South Bay, just off the coast south of LAX, so World Cup visitors likely will be hanging out primarily in the “basin” — from Santa Monica to East L.A., Hollywood to Long Beach and into Orange County — and over the hills into the San Fernando Valley. Our best advice: Get a car, brave the traffic.

What outsiders should know about soccer in Los Angeles

Soccer’s been part of L.A.’s fabric since the late 1800s but was mostly hidden from mainstream society until the youth soccer boom, following the Torrance-based AYSO’s rapid 1970s expansion, coincided with the L.A. Aztecs’ 1974 NASL debut. Southern California is the most verdant youth-development landscape in the country, boys and girls, and some of the greatest U.S. legends — Landon Donovan, Julie Foudy, Cobi Jones, Eric Wynalda, Alex Morgan, Marcelo Balboa, we can go on — have emerged from local fields.

Every American World Cup squad since Italia ‘90 has featured SoCal products. There were eight in the ‘94 team. Five (Donovan, Jones, Wynalda, Balboa and Joe-Max Moore) made it to the three Cups. Four (Paul Caligiuri, John O’Brien, Eddie Lewis and Carlos Bocanegra) made it to two. Pico Rivera’s Cristian Roldan and L.A.’s Haji Wright might join that latter group this year.

Every U.S. World Cup coach from Bora Milutinovic to Gregg Berhalter had deep L.A. connections, even Jürgen Klinsmann, who has long lived in Orange County and famously played eight PDL games for Orange County Blue Star under the pseudonym Jay Göppingen two decades ago. The ’94 team prepped in Mission Viejo for a year and a half. Among Bora’s staff was Sigi Schmid, maybe the greatest of L.A. soccer legends, who groomed a dozen players toward 22 World Cup roster slots at UCLA.

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Unique soccer fandom

Los Angeles was part of Mexico until 1848. To some extent, it still is. This is, at its heart, a Mexican city, a Mexican region, and its deepest loyalties in this sport reach south of the border.

We have eight fully professional soccer teams in Greater Los Angeles — MLS’s Galaxy (in Carson, in the South Bay), MLS’s Los Angeles FC and the NWSL’s Angel City FC (Exposition Park, just south of downtown), the USL Championship’s Orange County SC (Irvine, where the 405 and 5 merge),  USL League One’s AV Alta (Lancaster, in the high desert to the north), MLS Next Pro’s Los Angeles FC 2 (Fullerton, in north Orange County) and Ventura County FC (Thousand Oaks, the Galaxy’s reserve side), and the Major Arena Soccer League’s Empire Strykers (Ontario, in the Inland Empire) — and none are nearly as popular here as Club America and Chivas de Guadalajara. El Tri has a far more passionate following than the U.S. national team.

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What visitors to Los Angeles should be sure to do

What interests you? There are a billion things to do here. And when you’ve done them all, a billion more. Some are obvious: Disneyland. Duh. But you might have more fun at roller-coaster heaven Six Flags Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita, above the San Fernando Valley, and the folksier Knott’s Berry Farm, six miles northwest of the “Happiest Place on Earth” in Buena Park.

There are several world-class art museums, starting with LACMA on the Miracle Mile, the Broad and MOCA downtown, the Getty in the Sepulveda Pass (and Getty Villa off Pacific Coast Highway approaching Malibu), the Norton Simon in Pasadena, and UCLA’s Hammer in Westwood Village. Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art, the nation’s only such museum specializing in modern and contemporary work, is worth a visit, too. L.A.’s science and natural history museums are in Exposition Park, across the street from USC. A real prize is The Huntington in San Marino, renowned for its library, art museum and, perhaps most of all, its gardens.

Movie buff? Warner Bros., Sony (former MGM) and Paramount offer studio tours, and there’s also Universal Studios, an amusement park that includes an hour-long “tour” attraction; for more studio, get a VIP pass. Disney Studios also has a tour, but you must be a D23 member. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is next door to LACMA on Wilshire, and although George Lucas’ Museum of Narrative Art — it looks like a spaceship! —  isn’t set to open until September, you can get a glimpse of it just beyond the Coliseum on the western edge of Exposition Park. Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame,” all those stars on Hollywood Boulevard and its cross streets, is worth a walk if that’s your thing, and check out the hand- and footprints (and paw- and hoofprints) at “Grauman’s” Chinese Theatre at the western edge of the Hollywood and Highland complex. Catch a film there, too. It’s been in operation for, come late May, 99 years.

Hard to get more “L.A.” than a night at the Hollywood Bowl, which has 10 events during the month of SoFi games, including jazz and reggae fests, a three-night Fourth of July spectacular with the Beach Boys, and, on July 9, “The Classical World Cup,” with a “soccer-themed” program by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.