From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Football Confidential.

Stories of soccer in the international city, Los Angeles.

It's a special production from the unfictional podcast of documentaries, true stories, and

radio movies.

And a soccer store in Los Angeles can sometimes be a community meeting place, like a barber shop. Guys hang out, watch TV's usually showing a

match, look through jerseys of their favorite team, dream about buying

expensive cleats. This story is about a family-run local chain that's been the soccer store for generations of LA-based players.

The episode is called The Soccer Store.

So the story goes like this. The Colombian national soccer team had arrived in Los Angeles to play an exhibition match, but they suddenly found themselves without their equipment.

This was in the early 90s when Colombian drug trafficking was in the forefront of the news,

and a big group arriving from Colombia might attract attention from customs or other government

agencies.

And sure enough, when the team arrived in Los Angeles,

they found that their equipment had been confiscated.

They confiscated their equipment in Miami,

and they came to LA to play against Mexico at the

Coliseum. Yeah, a friendly game. This is Nicholas Oriana along with his son

Louis. It's a story they tell about their early days was selling sports

equipment. And I got a phone call. They asked me if I had Waios. The Columbians they called Waius to the streets. But we're

we're much of wires. We need a lot of shoes.

By the time the Colombian team got their equipment returned to them they found that all of the

shoes had been cut open presumably while they were being searched.

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