As it is for many, there was a moment when Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Brandon McCarthy’s interest in soccer went from a passing interesting to something that took hold of the imagination.

“You know what it was? It was Steven Gerrard’s goal against Olympiacos in the Champions League in late 2004,” McCarthy said this week. “I happened to just be watching, I’d been a very, very loose fan of soccer up to that point, it hadn’t really struck me other than having played it as a kid, and there was something about that moment, the celebration following it, it just completely took me over with the feeling that I couldn’t really understand, so I just kept following Liverpool from that point out to see if there was more of that.

“That of course ended up being the year they win the Champions League in the all-time match, and it was like, well if this is just soccer, this is the greatest thing ever. I got to learn more and more about it, and just kept going and it eventually turned into a full-blown passion.”

A little less than 12 years later – Gerrard’s magnificent strike occurred on December 8, 2004 – McCarthy isn’t just a fan anymore. In August he became part of the new ownership group for Arizona United SC, led by Kona Grill CEO Berke Bakay, which aims to take the professional game in the state to the next level.

McCarthy’s involvement in the group came at a relatively late stage, with Bakay and other leading Phoenix-area business leaders at the forefront of the acquisition of the team. But when the opportunity came along, presented by a mutual friend of his and Bakay’s, McCarthy saw a great opportunity.

“I know that he’d reached out to Berke saying ‘I might have a good fit for this group,’” said McCarthy. “It kind of blindsided me. It wasn’t something I had considered, or considered to be a possibility, and then once he mentioned it to me I really started weighing it and then talked to Berke and talked to some other members of the group, and it was like, this makes a lot of sense. This is where I live, this is something I’m passionate about. It’s a perfect fit.”

A Phoenix resident in the offseason, McCarthy was on hand on August 31 when the new ownership group was introduced at United’s game with the LA Galaxy II, and is now looking forward to learning from co-owners of the likes of Mark Detmer, the Managing Director of JLL, Tim Riester, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RIESTER Advertising and Dave Stearns, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Connect Wireless.

“For me it’s like a little bit of a college course, watching businessmen work, how they make it happen,” said McCarthy. “I think the fact that there’s such a breadth of knowledge, and it’s so wide, there’s marketing to business to restaurants to all sorts of different avenues that it makes for a great learning environment for me.”

Having been a major fan of the sport for more than a decade, McCarthy has also seen the way soccer has grown in the public eye in the U.S. Things have come a long way from the days of watching Liverpool games on Setanta Sports and FOX Sport World to now, where both domestic and international games are easily accessible on television from a fan’s living room or local bar – or even a major league clubhouse – and local professional soccer has expanded rapidly across the United States and Canada.

“Now it’s becoming more where it’s less that you have to find it than it can find you,” said McCarthy, “and I think that’s part of the job of this ownership group here in Arizona, we have to bring soccer to people who want it that just don’t know it exists.”

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Phoenix is currently the 12th-largest television market in the United States, and has drawn large crowds to international exhibitions both featuring the U.S. and Mexico National Teams, and this summer’s Copa America Centenario. For McCarthy, the goal is for the club to raise its visibility among those fans, which will serve as a launch-pad for long-term success.

“We know soccer as it exists here, we know everybody in the group here is passionate about soccer, we all have friends who are into it,” McCarthy said. “I think we have a lot of room to grow and to make sure people are aware this team is here. It’ll be fun to watch. We’re going to try and create an environment here that soccer fans will recognize and want to be a part of.”

With cities like Sacramento, Cincinnati, Saint Louis and Louisville all finding strong fan support since joining the USL in recently years, McCarthy believes the opportunity for United to make a major move in both the sporting hierarchy in Phoenix, and also within the U.S. soccer landscape, is there to be taken.

“I think so, and I don’t think there’s anyone in this ownership group who would have signed on if we didn’t believe that was possible,” McCarthy said. “I think we know it doesn’t mean you get to plop a field down and everybody will come and you’re leaving people stuck at the gate because there’s no room. I think we have to go out and earn that, and find a way to find those die-hard soccer customers who are here and make sure that they’re satisfied. I think we have the base, I think we have the group, I think we have everything we’re going to need to become like Cincinnati, like Sacramento, places where people get very passionate about the team that they have.”