They also played home games at Weingart Stadium on the campus of East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, in 1994 and various high schools in 1995.
[4] Rick Davis, a former New York Cosmos player and television broadcaster, was named general manager; former Brazil national team member Rildo da Costa Menezes was hired as head coach.
[21] Los Angeles finished the regular season with a 12–8 record, tied with the Montreal Impact and Colorado, but placed second in the league with 109 points.
[24] The Salsa rallied to win 3–0 in the second leg at Titan Stadium with a first-half strike from Thor Lee and two goals by Paulinho in the final twelve minutes.
Goalkeeper Pat Harrington made three saves in the shootout for Montreal, while Patrick Diotte scored the winning penalty in sudden death.
[30] In August, FIFA began reviewing the cross-border play proposal after CONCACAF raised concerns about potential conflicts with existing statutes that govern leagues and national competitions.
The series was postponed in November due to a Mexican Football Federation boycott against California Proposition 187, which would ban some state-provided education and medical benefits from serving undocumented immigrants.
Davis, in his capacity as general manager, announced that the team would continue to seek entry into the Mexican league system or return to the APSL by 1996.
[38][39] They also announced that their home matches would be played at local high schools instead of Titan Stadium with the World Cup Training Center in Mission Viejo as its main base.
[40][41] The third-division Salsa signed veteran U.S. national team defender Paul Caligiuri, who announced that he would donate his salary to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
[42] The team made their home USISL debut on May 7, 1995, at Trabuco Hills High School, where they lost 5–3 to the San Fernando Valley Golden Eagles in front of 900 spectators.
[44][45] They defeated the San Diego Top Guns 5–1 to advance to the USISL Western Division championship, where they played in a home-and-home series against the Monterey Bay Jaguars, the North Conference winners.
[50] The Los Angeles Galaxy made their Major League Soccer debut in April 1996 with Zambrano as an assistant coach and drafted Karapetyan from the Salsa.
[2][55] The team also played some of its 1994 exhibition matches at Weingart Stadium on the campus of East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, which had 22,355 seats.