Kevin Baxter
Los Angeles Times
March 18, 2014
Paul Arriola probably isn’t the most representative example of a Mexican soccer player.
Born in California, he played for two U.S. national teams and, as a teen, trained at the Galaxy’s academy in Carson. Though he could see Mexico from his house in Chula Vista, he never spent much time there and his Spanish is very much a work in progress.
But Arriola, in his second year with the Tijuana Xolos, is representative of the direction Mexican soccer is headed. Because in recent years that country’s top club teams have recruited dozens of U.S. citizens just like him to come play south of the border — something that would once have been unthinkable.
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