San Diego was officially announced as the host city to the 30th franchise to join Major League Soccer, the highest level of men’s soccer in the U.S. at an event at Snapdragon Stadium.
The group expects to begin play in the league by 2025 and will play at Snapdragon Stadium, which is owned by SDSU and hosts various events, concerts, and sports teams including SDSU Football, San Diego Legion, and San Diego Wave FC.
The club will be co-owned by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour. Mansour also owns majority ownership of the Right to Dream organization, which is a collection of youth soccer academies around the world that give opportunities to players to make the jump to professional soccer or pursue a college education. It was confirmed that a Right to Dream academy will be built to develop youth players from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, with more information to be announced in the future.
There are also other minority owners including the San Diego Padres’ Manny Machado, and former president of the MLS club LAFC, Tom Penn who will act as CEO of the new MLS franchise.
Penn confirmed to reporters that the team’s name would be San Diego FC or FC San Diego, depending on the response they receive from fans over the course of the coming months.
“That’s the fundamental question right out of the block,” Penn said. “Should we put the ‘football’ first or put ‘San Diego’ first? We’re going to listen to everybody on that, and then we’ll come up with our crest and our colors. And, I would say some time summer [or] early fall, we’ll do another big announcement to show our real brand.”
MLS nearly came to San Diego much earlier in 2018 as a part of the SoccerCity initiative that came to fruition after the San Diego Chargers left the city. The initiative was voted down by voters who instead voted for San Diego State University West project.
MLS commissioner Don Garber spoke at the event about it saying that even after the MLS lost their initiative they remained in communication with SDSU officials including SDSU President Adela de la Torre and Athletic Director John David Wicker to ensure that the new stadium would be built with MLS standards for a soccer stadium in mind.
Others from the original SoccerCity initiative including Landon Donovan elected a different route to support professional soccer in San Diego by bringing a USL club to the city called San Diego Loyal SC. Garber said he still speaks with Donovan and calls him a friend, but ultimately MLS ownership group and officials from the Loyal could not come to an agreement on bringing the two together.