Nike’s TOMA tour turns youth soccer into community

Nike’s TOMA – Nike wrapped up TOMA’s second season in Los Angeles and is sending 150 youth athletes to finals in New York’s Bryant Park from June 25–27, building a soccer platform that mixes competition with music, fashion, and neighborhood venues.

On a hot Los Angeles day, the usual rules of “where soccer happens” were nowhere in sight. Nike’s TOMA series—built around youth footballers. creativity. and community—has been trying to change the feel of the sport in the city all season long. It ended its second run earlier in June with a final set in an abandoned pool that Nike transformed into an event space. complete with a soccer pitch and a concert stage.

The World Cup may be run with strict boundaries—high security. tough rules about water bottles. and stadiums engineered around sponsor visibility—but TOMA is chasing something more organic. Nike says it aims to bring together the best youth footballers in Los Angeles to encourage expression and celebrate the neighborhoods they come from.

The series also has a behind-the-scenes architect. Oved Valadez, founder of Los Angeles creative agency INDUSTRY, served as Nike’s main thought partner in formulating TOMA. Nike then worked with local brands, collectives, musicians, and teams to keep the events “authentic” to the people it targeted.

Ian Shepherd, Nike LA’s head of marketing, framed the mission as both familiar and open-ended: start with “a version of that game that everybody loves,” then make it represent the communities in Los Angeles while letting athletes express themselves through a more creative lens.

TOMA’s first season relied on scattered pop-up matches around the city. The second season added more structure. culminating in a final competition called “The Pool.” LA Hooligans FC won the girls competition on the way to that ending—by scoring a game-winning goal in 1v1 from 17-year-old Mina Nagashima.

Nagashima, a University of Minnesota commit, described how the play unfolded. She said her opponent had initial possession, but after she missed her opportunity, the larger pitch size at the pool gave Nagashima confidence.

“I saw a lot of space behind her, so I kind of felt like it was good for me to chip it over and then just kind of had like a race to it,” Nagashima said. “And then when I scored, it was just an amazing opportunity. I turned around and everyone was just like on me. It was a really cool experience.”

In the boys final, Alexsander Menendez—also 17—was part of Best LA’s winning club. He said the team had to face an opponent it had previously lost to. Menendez also emphasized focus despite the noise of big-name attention at the event. including soccer icon Zlatan Ibrahimović. who was in attendance taking pictures with fans.

“We just worked hard on and off the field,” Menendez said. “A lot of teams there kind of were just focused on Zlatan, all these big faces there the whole time. I was just focused on me and my teammates. and the message was just. ‘Don’t let anything get into your head. just stay focused.’ And then it ended up paying off and we won.”.

The final chapter isn’t in Los Angeles. Both teams will play in the TOMA finals in New York in Bryant Park from June 25–27. The finals will feature 150 top athletes ages 14–18 from around North America. Qualifying matches. deejay sets. and other elements will take place at Estadio Nike. an open-air venue Nike created for the event. A street market will also showcase local brands. The finals on Saturday, June 27 will be streamed on Amazon Music and Twitch.

TOMA has expanded beyond Los Angeles into cities across the country and internationally. including Miami. New York. Atlanta. Mexico City. Seoul and more. In Los Angeles specifically. the tour’s stops were built around named locations and partnerships: “The Lawn” with Compton FC; “The Bridge” in partnership with clothing brand Paisaboys; “The Beach” in tandem with Venice Beach FC; and “The Hill” with clothing brand Kids of Immigrants. which included a performance from Grammy-nominated Compton rapper YG.

Kids of Immigrants also designed kits for the final event, and the winning teams received metal trophies crafted by local artisan Georgina Treviño.

Shepherd said Nike wants more than the appearance of a corporate event—it wants to leave something behind. He described the goal as “create a little bit of a legacy,” with venues and partnerships that endure.

That approach is also part of how Nike argues it can build a broader soccer identity, including for people who aren’t athletes. Shepherd said someone doesn’t have to be an athlete to be involved in the beautiful game, pointing to roles in music, fashion, and art.

Lupe Llerenas, a culture journalist and media personality, has been following TOMA since July 2025 and is now working with Nike this summer to host World Cup watch parties in Los Angeles. She said the series has grown from a bold local idea into a youth-driven soccer and culture platform.

“It’s been incredible to watch (TOMA) grow from a bold local idea into one of the most exciting youth-driven soccer and culture platforms in Los Angeles,” Llerenas told the publication covering the story. “What started as pop-up matches in unexpected spaces has turned into something much bigger.”

She described the series as a community for young players to compete, be seen, express themselves, and feel like they belong—adding that it has brought visibility, confidence, creativity, and a sense of possibility for the next generation.

The human stakes of that mission show up in the details Nike uses to explain why it matters. Nike cites a U.S. Soccer statistic saying approximately 70% of youth in the United States quit the game by age 14. TOMA’s point. according to Nike’s stated mission. is to give young players pathways to keep playing futbol on their terms.

That language of pathways is echoed by Mateo Alcantar, a TOMA participant and member of Venice Beach Football Club. Alcantar said he caught the attention of Nike executives and was invited into a bigger project. The 15-year-old is nearly the star of Nike’s cinematic “Rip The Script” World Cup ad. before Erling Haaland steals the spotlight.

Shepherd connected Alcantar’s role to the broader theme of creative freedom and access for kids who don’t always get exposure. He said TOMA has always been about pathways and access, and that when Nike found Alcantar, his creativity and joy were representative of the story Nike wanted to tell.

Shepherd also pointed to how Alcantar’s inclusion helps complete that narrative: Alcantar wearing a TOMA jersey while running to catch a pass from Vini Jr., with Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappé, Zlatan, and Kim Kardashian looking on.

For Shepherd, that visibility ties back to Los Angeles neighborhoods while Nike scales TOMA into multiple areas of the world. He said Nike wants to represent that shift across bodies of work around the World Cup moment.

Alcantar described the feeling of being pulled into that campaign as surreal. He told The Camiseta Collective that he couldn’t fully put it into words and said that when the commercial came out, he sat in his bed for two hours thinking, “Is this real?”

Another athlete carrying the movement is Nagashima. She said she has participated in several TOMA events, including at ComplexCon, and appreciates how Nike embraces the creative side of soccer.

“This kind of motivates us to keep on playing, and it ups our confidence,” Nagashima said. “And I feel like, especially for me, it helped me grow as a player and a person.”

Menendez’s path has also connected TOMA to higher-level soccer opportunities. He plays on the Los Angeles Galaxy Academy’s U-18 team. where he has gotten to play in Croatia and France. Menendez said he grew up cheering for the MLS side and for Zlatan and David Beckham. who spent time with the club. Being selected to play for the Galaxy. Menendez said. was “an unreal feeling. ” and he recalled crying after receiving the offer.

When Shepherd looks back on TOMA’s purpose, he describes it as a fix for a “gap” he says soccer culture can feel when it becomes “too formal and too institutional.” His hope is that kids who participate “feel seen.”

Now that TOMA exists, Shepherd said, Los Angeles soccer has a different identity—more expressive, more tied to community, and shaped by the kind of confidence that follows belonging.

“As a consequence of it, you start to see even the way that the players are playing the game,” Shepherd said. “Because they have their community around them, you see their confidence emerging, you see their swagger and their style.”

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