MLS Preview: San Diego FC | OneFootball

The newest franchise in the MLS is finally coming to the bridesmaid of United States sports: San Diego. Honestly, this city can’t attract or hold onto a major sports team (and, no, baseball does not count). Heck, even Chivas opted for Los Angeles when they came into the league back in 2005.

Soccer History of San Diego

With regards to the beautiful game, San Diego has sputtered into relationships across the NASL, two separate indoor leagues and the USL, but no suitor ever popped the question. All this despite having some of the strongest TV viewership of the game, and producing some of the most notable players in U.S. history.

By most accounts, San Diego has seen four to five semi-serious attempts to establish a MLS presence within the past ten years. One, involving Landon Donovan and Warren Smith, became the San Diego Loyal SC, who played in the USL Championship from 2019-2023. But it wasn’t until the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a federally recognized Native tribe, started looking for partners to help them expand into sports franchise ownership that things got serious.

The Mansour Group & Right to Dream

In waltzes Mohamad Mansour, an Egyptian-British billionaire with some fat-ass bankrolls, and with a cool half-BILLION dollars on the table the MLS tripped over themselves to give San Diego the expansion franchise.

Mansour is a smooth operator. His company, the Mansour Group, is Egypt’s second-largest by revenue, which is reportedly more that $6B (billion, with a B) per year. So yeah, the guy can afford to drop $500 mill. In 2021, he spent $120M to purchase the controlling interests in the Right to Dream Academy (RtD). Founded in Ghana in 1999 by a former Manchester United scout, RtD is a foundation committed to developing soccer talent (for both genders) while also giving them educational opportunities. While the vast majority of RtD academy graduates take a student-athlete path in the U.S. collegiate system, some prominent professionals also hail from the ranks, such as: Mohammed Kudus (West Ham), Mikkel Damsgaard (Brentford), Simon Adringa (Brighton, Hove & Albion), and Emmanuel Boateng (San Diego FC – surprise! ).

San Diego’s location close to the international border with Mexico allows RtD to pull youth talent from their neighbor due to a loophole in the FIFA recruiting bylaws. With RtD/Mansour group now owning three clubs on three different continents (they purchased Danish club FC Nordsjaelland in 2019 and Egyptian club FC Masar in 2022) this gives them a very broad pool of players to recruit from.

New is the New Rich

Of the five most valuable MLS franchises (ranked by Sportico), the top two did not exist 15 years ago. I think SDFC’s plans are to be in this rarified class another fifteen years from now. Of course, to do so they’ll need the type of star-power (whether on or off the field) that those two clubs have.

Recruiting the 2025 Team

The most common practice when building a team is to scour the free agency market. SDFC scouts probably compiled gigabytes of data and poured over thousands of hours of film looking for the right players. But as the newest team to join the MLS, San Diego was also the beneficiary of a special MLS Expansion Draft, which was held on Dec. 11, 2024.

How the Expansion Draft Works

Expansion drafts are common in U.S. sports leagues when a new franchise is awarded. All existing teams must “volunteer” players from their current roster into an eligible pool for SDFC to pick from. Existing clubs are not obligated to offer any Designated Players, and make the sole determination of who to offer and who to protect. Further rules prohibit taking more than one player from a club. In 2024, 354 players from all 29 clubs were offered to San Diego, who selected the following five.

Other Roster Moves

Their first (and so far only) Designated Player was announced back in June: Mexico’s Hirving “Chucky” Lozano. A seasoned veteran and prolific striker (76 goals & 43 assists in 267 games in Europe; 18 goals & 12 assists in 70 caps for Mexico), Lozano continued to play with PSV through the end of 2024 and joined the SDFC training camp in January.

Since then, the good news is that SDFC have signed enough players to field a team for their debut match against LA Galaxy on Feb. 23rd. But man are they taking their sweet time in doing so. The back line looks solid enough, with Northern Irish national Paddy McNair, Colombian Andrés Reyes and Swedish-American Christopher McVey in the center. Aníbal Godoy (ex-Nashville SC), Jeppe Tverskov (ex-FC Nordsjaelland) and Emmanuel Boateng (ex-Revolution), all of whom are over 30, will bring experience to a midfield whose average age is only 23. Up front Chucky will have to do most of the heavy lifting, with Dane Marcus Ingvartsen and ex-LAFC youth Tomás Ángel the two strikers.

Of course, no big names brought on board is kinda bad news. The rumor mill has been churning out stories that Kevin De Bruyne is a potential DP, which would be awesome, but let’s not be hasty. The Belgian will likely be watching the team’s performance in the first half of the season.

Prediction

Let’s be honest, a DP like Hirving “Chucky” Lozano isn’t a game-changing draw. With a roster looking like a RtD student-exchange, it will be very interesting to see how coach Mikey Varas (in his debut first-team coaching position) puts these pieces together.

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