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JEFF HORWICH: Just another Saturday afternoon in St. Cloud. White Cloud it's been called in the past, largely because of the German Catholic dominance here. Anyway, on this Saturday afternoon in St. Cloud, the Arabs are driving upfield toward the Laotians. The Arabs showed up a little short-sided, so some Somalis are filling in. The Laotians would normally play the Vietnamese tonight, but the Vietnamese had a game in Fargo this weekend. White Cloud, indeed.

Immigrant communities in St. Cloud and many parts of Minnesota are reaching the certain critical mass it takes to field a soccer team. Ethnic-based teams in the Minnesota Youth Soccer Association have gone from zero five years ago to more than two dozen today. And there are dozens more unrecognized youth and adult squads playing every night in the Twin Cities and smaller Cities, like St. Cloud, Rochester, and Mankato. Rural communities like Melrose in central Minnesota are also seeing their share of action.

Coaches for the Melrose Real Madrid tried to coax in a final goal before the team heads into halftime down 2-0. This seven-team league, almost all Mexican, plays a set three-game schedule in Melrose every weekend.

[WHISTLE BLOWS]

The league is two years old, still without a name. There's a referee on the field, and the teams play in shiny new uniforms. 31-year-old Luis Gomez is lacing up his shoes to head in. He works weekdays in a St. Cloud diner but plays for the Melrose team.

LUIS GOMEZ: Yes, 14 in Long Prairie, one in Melrose, one in St. Cloud, and one in [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah. This is the game for all Mexican people, the soccer.

JEFF HORWICH: Like Real Madrid, their opponents, the Long Prairie Pumas name themselves after a professional soccer team. Mustachioed coach Armando Brabo works his day job at a Long Prairie egg plant.

ARMANDO BRABO: It's a professional team in Mexico, Pumas. Last year, we had the uniform of the Long Prairie Packing. They supplied us supplied with a uniform. They help us.

JEFF HORWICH: The Pumas side of the field has room for the crowd, and a couple dozen spectators have come out to watch. In the parking lot, an old blue school bus has its emergency door swung open. An entrepreneurial family is selling candy, corn on the cob, and frijoles out the back. Across the asphalt, tough-looking teenagers crowd around their cars and compete with their stereos.

[LATIN MUSIC BLARING]

Coach Brabo says the regularly scheduled games become an excuse for a community event.

ARMANDO BRABO: Pretty much people that work together. Like, some people work in [INAUDIBLE]. Some people work in the Long Prairie Packing.

JEFF HORWICH: So they'll come out to watch people that they work with?

ARMANDO BRABO: Yes, yes. They invite them. Hey, come see us play.

JEFF HORWICH: Back down the road in St. Cloud, Larry Haws is a county commissioner also known in some circles as Mr. Soccer. Over decades of coaching, Haws has run into players from cultures around the world. The Japanese, fairly peaceful ballplayers. Mexicans, more aggressive, he thinks, because they follow pro soccer so closely.

LARRY HAWS: Who you got? Listen up.

JEFF HORWICH: On this night, his competitive team of 16-year-olds is scrimmaging with St. Cloud's Vietnamese team. He says it's good experience in more than one way.

LARRY HAWS: It makes the world a lot smaller. Right now, the world for this is 120 yards long by 75 yards away.

JEFF HORWICH: Haws particularly enjoys the different styles of play different cultures bring to the game.

LARRY HAWS: Whether they're coming from a country that has grass or they're coming from a country that's sand or they're coming from a country that has wet soil conditions, how they pass the ball, at what level in the air do they pass the ball makes a difference. Also, size of fields-- this piece of property here, in many countries, if they had this piece of property, they would put it in-- they would put it in crops and not use it for an athletic turf.

JEFF HORWICH: Haws's team has Nick Hanks in the goal. He sees some of these guys around school now and then, but Hanks says this is really the only time many white and Vietnamese players interact. He says playing the Asian teams is great practice.

NICK HANKS: Yeah, they play more controlled.

JEFF HORWICH: What do you mean for? For somebody who's--

NICK HANKS: They pass the ball better than a lot of Minnesota. I don't know, we play more. They know the game well, actually, is what I'm trying to say.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

JEFF HORWICH: As a teenager, Tri Nguyen escaped Vietnam in 1986. After detours through the Philippines and Wisconsin, he's found a role in St. Cloud as a community organizer and sometime soccer player.

TRI NGUYEN: This is the first step that what I try to get the kids that I've known together. And then hopefully these kids can go out and get their peers and then bring them in and form the team.

JEFF HORWICH: As Nguyen sees it, the soccer team will do more than just play soccer. They also perform around the region as the Vietnamese Dragon Dance Squad. And they're a ready-made corps of young men to pitch in on various community projects.

TRI NGUYEN: The main focus is to keep the kids off the street and keep the kids into a group where they can make commitments and shoot toward their goal of stay together.

JEFF HORWICH: Even though the dominant image of US soccer today might be suburban kids piling out of a minivan, the president of the Minnesota Youth Soccer Association says soccer began in Minnesota as an immigrant's game. Ellie Singer, a self-described soccer mom, says immigrant communities from Europe first brought the game to the Twin Cities midway through the last century.

The MYSA has a relatively new program called Soccer Start to get more ethnic teams and people of color involved with the organization. They've brought Laotian, Hmong, Somali, and Hispanic teams on board, mostly in the Twin Cities. The MYSA can provide referees, secondary insurance, and a regular chance to play. But Singer says finding a field to use every week and going through the paperwork can be a turn off for some of the teams out there.

ELLIE SINGER: Between those two things and the fact that some of these kids have an awful lot of challenges that they face, getting them to a soccer game can be an overwhelming challenge for a coach. And it might be easier just to do the pickup thing rather than commit yourself to a weekly league game.

JEFF HORWICH: There is one largely Hispanic girls team in Minneapolis. Singer says getting girls involved has also been a tough nut to crack.

ELLIE SINGER: Especially for those cultures where the woman has not been an athlete or has been known to take care of the home rather than be out doing sporting events, which are predominantly male.

JEFF HORWICH: Even if only men are on the field, Somalis in St. Cloud see their team as a major step in the evolution of the whole community. Somalis say their population in the city has grown from 45 to nearly 2,000 in the past two years. They were celebrating their emergence as a community when the team hosted its first game this month against a Somali team from Marshall. The game was a 3-3 tie, but community leader and referee Mohamoud Mohamed grabs the mic to celebrate a victory.

MOHAMOUD MOHAMED: We are happy, and we are making here our home and our youth are doing good. And again, I would like to say thank you very much, Marshall. You did a great move. You visited us. Welcome to St. Cloud. We will visit you too.

JEFF HORWICH: HealthPartners will help provide uniforms in the fall. There are former Somali soccer pros among the St. Cloud community who should give the team a boost of talent. Mohamed wants to win, but to him, the crowd gathered around tells him this is sports in the service of a deeper ideal.

MOHAMOUD MOHAMED: And it is the first time we socialize like this since we had that civil war in our country. The people living in St. Cloud, it is their first time to have this kind of coming together.

JEFF HORWICH: For Mohamed and many other immigrants, it may be no great exaggeration to say soccer really is more than a game. Jeff Horwich, Minnesota Public Radio, in Central Minnesota.