Paul Arriola
Photography by Peter Bonilla & Jisung Kim.
“I would cross the border to go into Tijuana every day. It’s the busiest border in the world, but for me, it was just part of my normal routine.”
Paul Arriola grew up in Chula Vista, California, only a short car ride away from Mexico. Born in an area enamored with soccer, Paul quickly fell in love with the sport, and it would be an affair that’d shape the rest of his life.
With a decade of success at the highest level in Liga MX, MLS, and the international stage, Paul is about to confront one of the most important years of his career. At 27, he’ll be facing the pressure of being the most expensive domestic transfer in MLS, he’s coming off the back of captaining the USMNT to a historic Gold Cup victory, and he’s one step away from taking the U.S. back to a World Cup. With such a pivotal year ahead, it’s no wonder he’s so open to talking about the past and reflecting on everything that’s brought him to this point. From Chula Vista to Tijuana and from D.C. to Dallas, every step has handed him lessons and memories he’ll never forget.
Paul began playing soccer at the age of six, but he was not exactly a star from the get-go. He was on the C team of his youth club, and they had an abysmal record from what he recalls. While Paul didn’t stand out immediately on the soccer pitch, he did show promise in baseball, and many in his family believed he would grow up to play in the MLB one day. Still, his love for soccer won out.
“Everyone around me played soccer,” remembers Paul. “Most of my friends at school were Latinos, and the game we played was soccer. Having that connection and being constantly around it made me choose soccer above everything else.”
Despite playing soccer every day, the thought of becoming a professional soccer player always seemed far off. There were no big local clubs to follow near Chula Vista, and trying to watch any sort of Premier League coverage was a struggle.
“I was never one of those people that wanted to be a professional soccer player. I never had that tangible goal in front of me when I was a kid, so I didn’t think about it much. I always just wanted to get to the next step, and wherever that took me, I was going to be happy.”
Things only clicked once Paul hit high school. By that point, he had already made the regional team, the state team, and the national team. His sophomore year, he was invited to the U-17 USMNT residency program – an elite academy for the 40 best soccer players in the U.S. youth pool. Paul was only fifteen at the time, and it would be an experience that would impact him on and off the field.
“I knew if I wanted to get to the next level, I had to go. But I was very introverted and didn’t have much of a personality,” says Paul. “I was kind of quiet, but I liked hanging out with my small group of close friends. Going to that residency program was going to change everything, but I knew I had to sacrifice my normal life for that.”
“So, I went, and it was the worst year of my life.”
Life off the field in the program wasn’t exactly for Paul, who describes himself as being “shy” and “introverted” back then.
“I didn’t open up too much,” he confesses. “I didn’t try to connect with people there, especially the older guys. It was intimidating. When you’re fifteen, and you have to go live with forty other guys, and you have to move away from friends and family, it was just tough.”
Nevertheless, the outcome of going to the residency program was the best that Paul could have hoped for.
“I was always part of the C team, and towards the end, I actually ended up making the World Cup Qualifying roster. I didn’t play one minute. I was the only one that rode the bench the entire process. A couple of months before the U-17 World Cup, a few of the guys in front of me started to drop out for one reason or another, through injuries or just leaving the program. The next thing I knew, I was on the plane to Mexico to play at that World Cup. I started three out of the four games, and it changed my life. Having my family in the stands, knowing that people were watching on T.V., feeling that pressure, I was just happy because that had been my goal.”
Upon returning home from the World Cup and the residency program, a few short weeks gave him the opportunity to reflect and finally commit to what he truly wanted to pursue.
“I was burnt out, honestly. I was fifteen, and it already felt like I had been working forever. I went back to my high school for my junior year of high school, and after a couple of weeks, I knew it just wasn’t for me. I felt like I was losing time by going to school from eight to three and not training every day – especially after coming from that residency environment. I had grown so much in that past year, and maybe I just needed those few weeks of perspective to realize what I wanted.“
“I finally knew that soccer was my path.”
Following the U-17 World Cup and after returning home, Paul began to garner attention from many Mexican teams. One of those was Tijuana, which was only ten minutes away from where he lived. However, Paul had been training with the L.A. Galaxy Academy, and his focus at sixteen remained to sign a homegrown contract with the team.
Paul continued to train with the Galaxy, but he also had the opportunity to train with Tijuana during the offseason. In 2013, ahead of the MLS season, Paul moved up to train with the first team, which forced him to make one of the most important decisions of his career.
“The level in L.A. was very, very high. Landon Donovan had just come back from his quick retirement, Robbie Keane was there, Gyasi Zardes, Omar Gonzales, Juninho, it was a stacked team. I really struggled, but I wanted to hang on and see how the situation would play out,” Paul says.
Throughout that preseason, Tijuana had continued to reach out to Paul’s agent to offer him a contract. After holding out on signing for weeks, he finally had to decide. A few of those legendary players in L.A. helped Paul make the right choice.
“I remember Omar Gonzalez calling me out of nowhere one day. He had heard Tijuana and L.A. both wanted to sign me, and he just gave me his opinion. At the time, he mentioned that really that L.A. was a great team for stars but not necessarily for young guys to develop. That swayed me towards Tijuana.”
But the final swing came from none other than Bruce Arena.
“He told me they were going to sign me. But he was very frank about what he envisioned for me at the club. He said the staff didn’t feel as if I was ready to play with the first team yet, and so I would be competing with the reserves. I would have to spend one more year with the academy before they reassessed, but they would still offer me a contract because that was my dream. He was very honest with me, and that’s something I will always appreciate. It was career-changing. He could have easily filled my head with all these great things about me playing on the first team, but he was very direct about my chances and basically made the decision for me.”
“At that point, I decided to go down to Tijuana and see what it was all about.”
Paul quickly signed a U-20 contract, but after impressing the new first-team coach, he was moved up to the first team. That first year, he would end up playing in 15 out of 18 games. Besides the excitement of signing for a professional club, Paul was also just happy that he could stay close to home.
“I never lived in Tijuana. I lived at home, and I would just commute every day. When you’re a young player, I feel like there’s still that desire to be a kid and be like your friends. For me, it was amazing because I was getting paid, I could see my family, hang out with my friends after they were done with school, and just live the best of both worlds.”
But simply playing in the Mexican top flight and experiencing the thrill of the professional game also impressed the young Paul.
“Tijuana’s early success as a new club meant that everyone was going to games, even people from San Diego or Los Angeles. That was their new team. So there I was, barely out of high school, with all of my friends and former classmates going down to watch me play. It felt surreal.”
Over the course of four years, Tijuana became Paul’s second home. After almost every game or training, he would visit Taconazo, his favorite taco place right next to the stadium, or he would sit down to eat at Cabana, one of his favorite restaurants in Tijuana. The drives from Chula Vista to Tijuana soon became routine, and Paul would always be amazed by the large traffic across the border, even if his Trusted Traveler pass allowed him to complete the drive in half an hour or less. Having grown up in Chula Vista, making the drive to training or games was never a shock, though, and the most surprising story during his time at Tijuana had to do with the owner, Jorge Hank Rhon.
“He had a zoo in the back of the stadium. I had to drive through all of the animals to get to our training field. He would joke around and say if we hit any chickens, we’d owe him a thousand bucks. He also had tigers, horses, and maybe a couple of bulls. That was probably the most surprising thing I saw.”
During his time at Tijuana, Paul made over 80 appearances for the club. He played under Piojo Herrera, who he hails as one of his “favorite coaches,” and he says he was instrumental in helping him grow as a player and be where he is today. His success at the club level also earned him call-ups to the national team starting in 2016, and soon enough, Paul knew he was ready to take the next big step in his career.
“Once I started playing for the national team and also earning a prominent role for Tijuana, I started to realize I had to keep pushing and just try to get to the next level. My life at Tijuana was amazing, but I think I reached a point where I was seen as the little brother, you know. It’s like within families, no matter how successful you become, you’ll always be viewed as the young kid by the older people. That’s just how it is, and that’s what I started to understand at Tijuana towards the end of my fourth year. It didn’t matter how good I became; I was probably always going to be seen as the youngster, which was going to hold me back professionally and financially. I felt like in order to grow in my career, I had to go from being a homegrown player to being a player that was influential to the team.”
“That’s why D.C. United was perfect for me.”
In August of 2017, Paul signed with D.C. United, marking the beginning of the MLS chapter of his career.
“It was a different type of pressure,” he confesses. “I came in as a young D.P., and I was a record signing for the club at the time. It was a lot of pressure, but I think if you strive to be the best, you need to put yourself in difficult situations. You just have to do it. Up to that point, I’d never been the focal point of a team or the best player on a team – whether the USMNT or Tijuana. I had never had the pressure on me to win the game for everyone, but I needed to know if I could do it or not. D.C. gave me that opportunity.”
While the latter half of 2017 and the early half of 2018 gave Paul the ability to learn to step into the prominent role on a team, Wayne Rooney’s arrival to D.C. United shifted Paul’s perspective on the type of player he could become.
“When Wayne came around. I learned that I didn’t have to be the best player. Wayne came in, Lucho started playing really well, and I learned that in order for me to thrive, I don’t need to be the best player. I don’t need to put that pressure on myself. I just have to be myself and do what I can do. That’s what I loved the most about D.C. I learned how to best serve the team. I’m never looking to be the center of attention or be the only guy that makes a difference on the field. I just care about winning, and in D.C., I learned how to best fit in a team to get us closer to winning.”
That first year with Wayne Rooney is one of those moments in his career that will always stay with Paul. It was arguably the best year he and the team had during his stay in D.C.
“Looking back on it, it’s like I could feel the air in 2018. I remember the exact feeling I had that year. I remember us having to play a lot of games on the road that year and always being one or two goals away from getting points. I remember Rooney showing up and thinking, ‘is this real?’ We loved him because he was so normal. He wanted to be us, and as much as people looked at him as a superstar, he was just another teammate, and that’s how he wanted it to be.”
That bond extended beyond pleasantries, banter, or having fun on the field, though. In a moment when he needed it most, Rooney and the rest of his teammates helped uplift Paul during one of the most difficult moments of his life.
“I lost my dad at the end of 2018. I’ll never forget the way that everyone was there for my family and me. It’s something super special to me and something I’ll always remember. I came back to playing in less than a week after losing my father, and I was super emotional that game. I remember crying after the final whistle with my fiancee, and the way that everyone lifted me up and supported me was something that will stick with me forever.”
That sense of camaraderie is arguably one of the biggest takeaways for Paul that season. “It made it so easy for us to hang out off the field and talk about normal things,” he says, “which is what made us all so cohesive on the field and have a great year.”
“There were so many great things about that 2018 season, and I’ll always believe that we could have easily been champions.”
While 2018 captured lightning in a bottle on the field, his move to the DMV also gave Paul a chance to explore a new part of the country and meet new people. During his five years at the club, he forged relationships and ties to the area that he’ll never forget.
“D.C. is a great place to be. The nightlife, the restaurants, the cultures, the diversity, and the ability to live in three different states if you like. I first lived in Alexandria, and that’s when my fiancee and I started hanging out. It’s so close to the city and so underrated. We just built so many memories there, and then we moved to Falls Church, where we finally had a backyard for our dogs, and we had our friends over and all our family over. Then, we bought a home together in Ashburn and lived there. It was our first home together. So each place we lived in in the DMV has its own reasons for being special.”
The following year, D.C. United couldn’t maintain the pace they had built up in 2018, and the season didn’t pan out the way fans or players had hoped. Paul vividly remembers the 0-0 tie against a 9-man Cincinnati on Decision Day, a match that reflected far they had strayed from the thrill of 2018. The 2020 season wasn’t much different, and an ACL injury and the COVID-19 pandemic made that year another one to forget.
Even if he wasn’t able to replicate the success of 2018 or later even play at all due to his ACL injury, Paul always found a way to contribute to the team. And he did so in the same way that other guys like Omar Gonzalez or stars at the L.A. Galaxy had done with him when he was younger.
“I knew what it was like to be a young guy and have people help you and what it was like to have people not help you. Someone I really got close with was Griffin [Yow]. He was special to me because I could see his potential, and I wanted to be that person that could help him grow. When I first saw him, I just thought, ‘this kid can be better than me,’ so I knew I just wanted to help. I would give him advice and pointers on anything I could, and I would always just tell him that I wanted him to take my spot. It became a thing that I would always repeat, and it was just to push him and motivate him. Whether I was on or off the field, I always tried to be a good influence for him and the rest of the young guys too.”
That experience of becoming a leader for younger players soon came in useful in 2021. This time, it wasn’t with D.C. United but rather with the national team.
After returning from injury and from a short stint at Swansea City, Paul solidified himself as one of the leading forwards in MLS once again. His solid performances at the start of 2021 earned him a spot in the Gold Cup roster that summer. Paul had already been a staple at the USMNT – after all, he’d climbed up through all of the youth divisions until finally making his senior debut all the way back in 2016. His experience on the international stage immediately placed him as a de facto leader for a squad full of young players and USMNT first-timers. In one of the most incredible moments in team history, they were able to capture what many had thought impossible.
“That experience with the team was very special,” he says. “We were the underdogs. Everyone did expect us and Mexico to be in the final, but I don’t think many thought we could win the whole thing. That bond that we had as a team will last forever, and it’s a trophy that no one can take away from us.”
“I’ll never forget seeing Miles [Robinson] score, hearing the whistle blow, and celebrating. I had tears in my eyes. It felt like we had accomplished something that no one thought we could accomplish. I was the captain for that game, and it was a dream come true. It was like everything had built up to that moment. All the steps I’d taken had led me there.”
The celebrations in Vegas, where the final had been, did not disappoint – gatherings with friends and family, nightclubs, you name it. The next day, Paul flew back to D.C. United to finish out the second half of the MLS season. Much like in 2020, though, things didn’t end as he’d hoped.
The club narrowly missed the playoffs for the second year in a row, and it was another early offseason for Paul. With much to think about, he took the time to consider all the options ahead.
“It was exciting to hear the interest at first,” says Paul, “but when it was becoming official, I was definitely sad — looking back at all those memories now with D.C. United makes me nostalgic. The good moments, the bad moments, the people I’ve loved, the friends I’ve made, all of that made it difficult for me to leave. Ultimately, though, it was a decision that I felt was best for my career and for my life off the field as well.”
“It wasn’t a move that happened because of the fans or because of the city or the club. It was more personal. It was something I had to do to continue to grow and challenge myself. I felt I had outgrown who I was in D.C., and I needed a change.”
Leaving a place you’ve been in for almost five years is never easy, and Paul still misses much of what he and his family loved in D.C.
“What I miss the most about D.C. is our neighbors. In Ashburn, they became some of our closest friends, and when we started to move, my fiancee and I were just sad that we weren’t going to be able to hang out with them anymore. I’ll also just miss the city itself and all the great things to do and amazing places to eat. I’ll miss going to our favorite ramen spot or RPM for some sushi to celebrate special occasions. D.C. had really become our home, and it’s hard to leave.”
While moving has been difficult, the transition to Dallas has already brought big positive changes for Paul. A week after being traded to Dallas, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, and they are currently in the process of planning the wedding and moving into their new home.
“To be honest, it’s been quite hectic,” admits Paul. “My fiancee and I are figuring out places to go in the city, finding furniture, and all these different things. What I can say, though, is that I’ve loved how amazing people have been to both of us. People from the club, the fans, the players, everyone has shown willingness to help accommodate us. That goes a long way, and I’ve been incredibly impressed by the plans that the club has, and it makes me excited to see that they are headed in the right direction.”
In the meantime, as the season slowly ramps up, Paul has also taken the time to just enjoy his new home and spend time relaxing. “As professional athletes, we have to constantly travel and always be on the move, so sometimes the best thing is to have a nice home-cooked meal and just stay at home to watch Netflix. That’s something I’ve been doing since I moved. I like to watch Ozark, and my fiancee loves Euphoria, so we’ve been keeping up with those shows and just taking the time to relax at home. She’s also starting her new brand of game-day apparel, so she’s been spending a lot of time customizing things, especially for wives and girlfriends of players that we’re close to. I like to help her out with that, but I do laugh a little watching her stress out about that,” he admits with a smile.
As Paul settles into his new home, he’s happy to look back at every step that’s taken him to Dallas. But more than anything, he’s eager to look to the future – especially in a year like 2022.
“I want to have a successful year with the team, and I also want to push myself to the next level. My best year was 2018, with seven goals and eight assists, but I think I have so much more to give in a year. I really think I can do that in Dallas, and I’m looking forward to pushing myself to do that.”
His biggest goal, though, is to make the 2022 World Cup. “That’s been my goal ever since I was in the residency program all those years ago,” says Paul. “Back when I was in the C team, it was all I dreamed about.”
“Now it’s so close. That’s the biggest thing I could ever accomplish in my career.”
Photography by Peter Bonilla & Jisung Kim.
