SAN DIEGO FINALLY SCORES MLS TEAM
After long and twisting path, league makes good on its longstanding goal to place franchise in city
A stage overlooking a 35,000capacity stadium, deep-pocketed local and international investors, Padres star Manny Machado as a minority partner, a progressive youth development plan, soccer scarves that said “San Diego MLS,” Commissioner Don Garber at the microphone …
Garber spoke about how San Diego has been an expansion target since Major League Soccer’s inception in 1996, how he got a call from late Sockers coach Ron Newman 20 years ago extolling the virtues of the soccer community here, how one national team player after another from the area wondered how the fastestgrowing soccer league on the planet could keep bypassing San Diego.
“They all said, ‘How can you have a league fully expanded and not be here?’ ” Garber told an audience that included many of San Diego’s leading soccer figures. “Today, all of that hope and all of those dreams really come to fruition.
“There were so many moments that we were very close. The timing was never right. But our interest and our desire never waned. To everyone who believed in San Diego as an MLS city, they never wavered, and I want to say thank you. Because as of today, Major League Soccer has finally arrived in San Diego.”
And there it was. MLS in San Diego.
Finally. The league’s 30th team, coowned by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour and the Sycuan tribe, will begin play in February 2025 at Snapdragon Stadium as part of a 30-year lease finalized earlier this week,
“It’s the right place, the right ownership group, the right time.” Don Garber • MLS commissioner
the final piece of the expansion puzzle. It will include the latest Right to Dream residential youth academy that, the expectation is, will create a pipeline of players for the roster.
The colors and crest are forthcoming after focus groups solicit input from the community over the spring and summer.
The name? The working title is San Diego Football Club, and the team launched a website at sandiegofc.com.
That’s not final, according to CEO Tom Penn. It could be, though. And there likely won’t be an official mascot unless one develops organically after the club launches.
“It’s a placeholder, because you need something,” Penn said of SDFC. “It may very well be the direction we go. One question is, should we put San Diego first or football first? Should we be San Diego Football Club, or Football Club of San Diego? That’s an interesting question.
“Regardless, we see ourselves being called San Diego. We want to own that high ground and own the whole community that way.”
One of the new elements unveiled at Thursday’s introductory news conference is a minority ownership stake by Machado, who was in attendance and spoke briefly. The other is the involvement of Penn, a former NBA television analyst who helped launch LAFC’s MLS expansion franchise in 2018 and served as club president.
The genesis of the San Diego ownership group began at a December 2020 dinner with Sycuan Tribal Chairman Cody Martinez and local developer Brad Termini, sharing their mutual interest in pursing an MLS franchise. A month later, Termini got a call from Brent Lawrence, the founder of sports investment firm in Manhattan Beach, about a minor league sports opportunity.
Termini switched subjects to MLS and San Diego. Lawrence was familiar with both, having been part of the failed expansion bid in Sacramento and growing up in the county, playing basketball at Sweetwater High School (and later at UC Riverside).
Lawrence also knew Penn, who had left LAFC and was interested in another MLS project.
“In my last venture with LAFC,” Penn said, “I very clearly remember the commissioner saying we need local ownership, and nothing gets more local than the Sycuan tribe. … The one blind spot with the tribe was just not having soccer expertise.
Then the phone rang and Tom Vernon called, and everything changed.”
Vernon created Right to Dream in Ghana in 1999, a youth academy with the dual pathway of turning pro or playing college soccer in the United States. Another academy was built in Denmark to partner with a pro team in the top Danish league. Then Mansour invested $120 million and opened an academy in Egypt.
Mansour spent 10 years in the United States, getting degrees from North Carolina State and later Auburn. The next logical step for Right to Dream, he reasoned, was America.
“I believe in California,” said Mansour, whose global conglomerate called the Mansour Group owns several companies in the state. “San Diego is a beautiful city, a city we want to invest in. We believe in the MLS. We believe in the partnership we have with the Sycuan tribe and think it’s a fantastic fit for us. What can we bring to the table? We can bring football know-how through Right to Dream.”
For Sycuan, it amounts to a seminal shift after four decades of
sponsoring San Diego sports. The only other Native American entity to own a pro sports team is the Mohegan tribe with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun.
“Given the opportunity to be at the owner’s table, which is limited, is a dream for the tribe,” Martinez said. “It is a glass-ceiling moment for Native Americans. It gives us more of a platform to advocate for things we all have as common goals — education, health care, sport, elevating those from distressed and impoverished backgrounds to better opportunities.”
The team has been quietly meeting with community soccer leaders and has more events planned this week. It debuted billboards around the city Thursday morning with an MLS logo and the message: “Let’s kick it. San Diego’s newest pro team is here.”
On Saturday night, it will host a fan party at Snapdragon Stadium that is free with online registration.
It also began accepting nonrefundable season-ticket deposits of $18. Before the news conference had ended Thursday, it already had 500. By early evening, it had 5,000.
Why 18? It represents the number
of cities in San Diego County and an early theme for the club. A 10-foot mirrored soccer ball displayed at the news conference will travel to each city for a month in the 18 months before the inaugural game in February 2025.
A local artist from each city will create an expression of its soccer culture on a panel, with the completed ball returning to Snapdragon Stadium.
That the $310 million stadium will host an MLS team is a reality that, to many, seemed unattainable as recently as November 2018, when SDSU won a battle of ballot initiatives for the right to purchase the Mission Valley property and replace 70,000-seat Qualcomm Stadium.
Proponents of the losing proposal, called SoccerCity, had submitted an MLS expansion bid and regularly campaigned that the league would never come if SDSU got the land.
“I’ve always believed that even success isn’t final, so failure can’t be final,” Garber said an hour before Thursday’s festivities. “You can learn from the losses you have. We’re in the sports business. It’s not just about winning every game.
Losses build character and build fortitude and put you on a plan to try not to lose again.
“The day (SoccerCity) lost, the university reached out and said, ‘Hey, let’s work together.’ That was a bold and courageous move on their part. Sometimes the path to success goes through some twists and turns, and to me it makes it that much more enjoyable when you’re finally here. … It’s the right place, the right ownership group, the right time.”
Adela de la Torre had just become SDSU president and was confronted with difficult choices about stadium construction. She approved a design that met MLS specs and pushed forward with the pursuit of a team.
“There was a general perception that when San Diego State became owners of the property that MLS would never occur,” de la Torre said. “But what we did was to always build with that in mind. It wasn’t a straight line. It was a curved road. But we always thought that the moment would come. It was just a matter of getting the right partners.”