How soccer helped shape Alexi Lalas’ political views

Anyone who remembers Alexi Lalas from his playing days remembers the unruly shoulder-length red hair, thin headband and bushy goatee. They remember him traveling across Europe carrying little more than a backpack and guitar.

He was soccer’s version of Bill Walton, minus the tie-dyed T-shirts and penchant for listening to the Grateful Dead. Or at least it seemed that way.

Looks, however, can be deceiving.

“The aesthetic certainly was very hippie counter-culture,” said Lalas, who it turned out was neither. “But let’s be honest, in the ‘90s, grungy type of stuff was in vogue. So there was an element of fashion to it relative to the era.”

The goatee and the long hair are long gone and Lalas, 54, wears a suit to work now. Yet if his appearance has changed, his politics haven’t, because if Lalas once looked like a hippie, he never voted like one.

If you’ve seen or heard Lalas during his time as a studio analyst for Fox, you know his soccer opinions are as bold and direct as they often are unpopular. His political takes are even more provocative, meant to arouse, anger and annoy but also to provoke push-back, stirring debate and discussion.

Lalas and I met for a conversation recently over lunch at the Tarzana diner where John Wooden, Walton’s college coach, ate breakfast almost every day.

I never asked Lalas whom he voted for and he never asked me, but a cursory glance at social media makes it obvious our ballots canceled each other out. Lalas has stuck with Donald Trump through the racist speeches, the felony convictions, the promises to jail generals and journalists, and the fiscal policies 16 Nobel-winning economists say will wreck the U.S. economy.

I wanted to know why.

Turns out Lalas, a bruising, physical center back who was booked almost three times as often as he scored in a nine-year professional career, looks at politics the same way he looks at soccer — as a contact sport in which you fight to the end, then shake hands afterward.

Lalas spent a formulative part of his childhood in Greece, where his father, Demetrius, a professor of mechanical engineering and meteorology, was director of the national observatory in Athens. Lalas recalls walking past a tavern with his mother, the award-winning poet Anne Harding Woodworth (whose latest work “Gender: Two Novellas in Verse” addresses gender fluidity in a way that is decidedly un-MAGA-like), and asking why all the old Greek men were screaming and yelling at one another.

“They’re not angry. They’re talking politics,” she replied.

“And at the end of the screaming they would go back to drinking Ouzo and playing backgammon,” Lalas added. “That type of debate, through a lens of respect and civility, is something that I’ve always kind of envisioned and gravitated to. When it comes to politics, I enjoy it. It’s interesting to me. It’s entertaining to me.”

There often isn’t much respect and civility among the incoming messages on his social media feeds. Soccer fans are, for the most part, liberal and cosmopolitan in the U.S., so Lalas’ conservatism has led him to be called a vile human, a fascist and a dumb far-right puppet. And those are the comments we can print here.

His TV persona, he has said, is part shock jock; he doesn’t really care if you love him or hate him as long as you don’t change the channel. His political commentary online often can feel the same way.

Yet Lalas, who comes across as thoughtful and contemplative, insists he’s not trolling. Well, not totally.

“X is not representative of the world,” he said in reference to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “I enjoy the interaction, I enjoy the fight. But I also recognize that it is a very, very small sliver of the world.

“People act, behave, say things in a very different way when it’s face to face. It’s much more real and authentic when that is done.”

Lalas’ politics, he says, are based not on labels like Democrat or Republican but on common sense — something others would say is the antithesis of the MAGA movement, which sees censorship as freedom, hate as love and division as unity.

“I look at things and if it makes sense to me, I’m for it,” Lalas said. “I know it when I feel it. I know what is right, what I believe. And that’s what I go with.”

Those views were formed, in part, by a soccer career in which he played two years in Italy and part of another in Ecuador while representing the U.S. in more than 16 countries with the national team. At home he won four major trophies in three seasons with the Galaxy, then served as club president when the team signed David Beckham.

His political views still are evolving, so as part of that evolution, Lalas attended both national party conventions this summer.

“My travels and the things that I’ve seen have certainly given me perspective and ultimately have given me an appreciation for what we have here, and being proud of it,” he said over that most American of lunches, a half-eaten hamburger and fries. “I love to travel and I’m so fortunate that kicking the ball has enabled me to see so much of the world.

“However, I will tell you it’s still my favorite moment when that plane hits the tarmac back home. There’s nothing quite like it. This is the greatest country in the world and it’s worth defending and it’s worth being proud of.”

Politics ultimately share more similarities with soccer than there are differences, Lalas believes.

“There’s obviously the tribalism involved, there’s the performative aspect of it,” he said. “But also it has to be said the consequences and the ramifications are much more serious when it comes to politics.”

Maybe that’s why World Cups end with the two teams shaking hands, one offering congratulations and the other condolences, and elections don’t. Still, the line separating sports and politics is growing thinner and thinner. This fall a former baseball player, Steve Garvey, ran for the Senate in California while Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker and current member of the House, ran for the Senate in Texas.

Is that Lalas’ future as well?

“Not anytime soon,” he said. “But I don’t ever say never.”

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