Jorge Lopez is ready for the 2026 World Cup, and he has a giant, beach-ball-sized 2026 World Cup soccer ball to prove it.
Ever since it arrived in the mail from Adidas, a major World Cup sponsor, the ball has occupied a place of honor at Elite Sports Soccer, the sporting goods store, at 2637 Mission St that Lopez has operated since the 1990s.
Back then, Adidas wouldn’t even sell gear to merchants like himself in an era when brands only wanted to be affiliated with well-known areas or stores.
Sometimes the ball sits inside the store. Sometimes it’s outside, right in the hustle and bustle of Mission Street. Lest anyone get any ideas, it’s tied down to the table by a length of string.
This year’s World Cup will be held just 40 miles away, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, so Lopez has high hopes for business.
Born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1952, Lopez was, essentially, born into soccer.
On the block where he grew up, there was always a pickup game going on. In that kind of culture, there was plenty of opportunity for a young man with dreams of entrepreneurship to launch his own sporting goods company, which is what Lopez did. He ran a store where jerseys were sewn and printed on-site.
In 1989, Lopez moved to New York for what he thought would be a short-term stay in the U.S, scouting ways to make and sell clothing more efficiently.
To get by, he sold sports merchandise in parks. A few months later, his plans changed; instead of returning to Bogotá, he moved to San Francisco and began hand-making, and eventually screenprinting, sports jerseys in a relative’s garage.
Things moved fast from there. Before 1989 was over, Lopez and his family took over an alteration store on 21st Street between Mission and Capp streets.
They converted the space to produce and sell sporting goods, making soccer gear as well as clothing for basketball, tennis, baseball and volleyball. In the early days, they also produced clothes for nearby stores and aprons and uniforms for nearby restaurants.
It wasn’t until 1994, the last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup, that they dedicated the business wholly to soccer.
Other things were changing around that time as well. In the 1990s, more of Lopez’s customers in the Mission were looking for clothing from name-brand companies, like Adidas.
Lopez was determined to get it for them, but wasn’t clear on how to do that until he saw an advertisement for a trade show in Atlanta that promised connections with large sporting goods companies.
At the trade show, Lopez met representatives from Umbro, Nike and Adidas. It was a different era back then, and Lopez had to apply to the brands in hopes of selling their goods at his store. The only one that accepted his application at the time was Umbro.
The others were looking to sell to well-established stores in downtown areas and shopping malls, not small, independent retailers, Lopez said.
Lopez was not deterred. He met with the Mission Economic Development Agency, or MEDA. As Lopez continued to work on opening wholesale accounts with the brands his customers wanted, MEDA wrote letters to those companies, telling them of the urgent need for their merchandise in the Mission District.
“It’s very important for the community, because they don’t want to go downtown to get the merchandise we have,” Lopez said.
Eventually, Nike and Adidas relented.
In those early days, Lopez said, people would come in and be shocked that a small shop like his would have the same soccer kits, shoes, soccer balls and other merchandise as a store downtown.
That’s still the case today. Lopez prides himself on continuity. His store manager, for example, has worked there for over a decade.
Still, some things do change. Recently, he said, he was screenprinting a name and number onto a customer’s shirt and asked him the usual, “Hey, how did you find out about this store?”
“GPT,” said the customer.
“Very interesting how the artificial intelligence knows us,” Lopez said. Many customers still find them just by walking by.
Other things have changed too. When Lopez first arrived in the United States, soccer was a niche sport here. While there isn’t a pickup soccer game on every block, he said, the U.S. is pulling a little closer to Colombia. Today, the United States Women’s Team is the best in the world, he said.
Even though the men’s World Cup is nearby, business so far is a bit slower than it was four years ago when the World Cup was held in 2022, said Lopez.
Fans are starting to come in to buy World Cup merch and get jerseys printed with the name and number of their favorite players. Even when those players play for countries that didn’t make it to this year’s World Cup, like Italy.
Lopez wishes he could go to a game; Colombia is playing Portugal in Miami on June 27. But the tickets and cost of going are too much. So he’s focusing on bringing the energy to Elite.
“When the World Cup starts, I think people start to be more interested, more happy, a lot of energy,” Lopez said. “People enjoy — because this is a big festival.”
