After only being announced as an expansion club to become the 30th team in Major League Soccer in May of 2023, San Diego FC have had to ramp up their team building quickly ahead of hitting the pitch essentially a year and a half later in 2025. While this means that they’re moving on an accelerated timeline to get things done, that isn’t something that is slowing San Diego down as they’ve just announced a marquee signing in Mexican international and Scudetto winner Hirving “Chucky” Lozano. Lozano will become the first designated player in club history with a contract until the end of the 2028 MLS season. As the club won’t join MLS until 2025, Lozano will remain at PSV through 2024 before coming to San Diego.
Joining from PSV after winning the Eredivisie with them and scoring six goals in league play, Lozano will move stateside during a big period of soccer in North America. While Lozano won’t be involved in Copa America play for Mexico this summer, this is the type of signing that makes sense with the World Cup coming to the United States, Canada, and Mexico in 2026, as he looks to potentially get back into the fold.
San Diego are well poised to take advantage of more signings like this but not just because of the World Cup. With executives like Tom Penn, who has been through building an expansion team before with Los Angeles FC, and academy connections, San Diego are looking to make a name in their first season using global connections as a base to get off the ground.
“Signing a player of the international stature of ‘Chucky’ Lozano is the biggest possible endorsement of our project in San Diego,” said San Diego FC owner and chairman, Sir Mohamed Mansour.
As San Diego builds their roster, it’s hard not to compare this signing to another one that Penn was involved with when Carlos Vela joined LAFC. Leaving Real Sociedad at the time, Vela took MLS by storm winning an MVP and breaking the league record for goals in a season with 34 while also lifting MLS Cup with the Black and Gold. If Lozano can have even half the impact that Vela did, they could take the league by storm in their inaugural season.
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Now there’s a face of the club but what’s next?
As multi-club ownership becomes more common in soccer, San Diego FC are already taking advantage of that bringing in Jeppe Tverskov and Marcus Ingvartsen from FC Nordsjaelland. Historically, those are players who would’ve moved to a top-five European league but instead, they’ll be joining a new project in MLS because the familiarity of Right To Dream matters. Along with FCN, FC Tut is another club in their group in Egypt.
Right to Dream is a youth association football academy system based in Ghana which is also owned by Mansour Group which includes FC Nordsjaelland, FC Tut and now San Diego FC. With products such as Mohammed Kudus and Simon Adingra, it is becoming one of the top talent producers int he world.
“That’s a trend across MLS clubs, retaining more top talent rather than seeing it flee at a younger age. We’re also, in general, attracting young talent that’s seeing MLS as a springboard to future opportunities. The pathway is pretty obvious now from Central and South America, with various players wanting to come to the United States first with the aspiration to move to Europe,” Penn said about the state of attracting talent in MLS to CBS Sports. “In our case, we would like to be additive to that trend and even more specifically, there’s a long-standing trend of the best talent from San Diego leaving San Diego to go pursue their professional careers because there has not been an alternative at the highest level here. So the signing of Duran Ferree as a 17-year-old, really a phenom of a goalkeeper, he is able to stay with the hometown team now and sign with us rather than leaving town so we look forward to being the destination of choice for the best talent from San Diego and Mexico.”
The talent destination factor is already in action as San Diego now have their goalkeeper of the future, a top striker and winger along with a midfielder who can protect the defense. With Lozano as the face they can now look to attract more talent as well since he’s a player who is globally recognized and looked up to within Mexico due to his success both for clubs and El Tri. While it’s never as simple as just getting a team together on the pitch, this is where San Diego’s philosophy is important.
“We create environments where talent can flourish, equipping them with the skills they need to fulfill their potential — in football, education and in life,” is part of Right to Dream’s mission statement.
In order to be successful in MLS, while spending is important, so is the academy aspect and San Diego is building on that to make sure that they have a fully functioning academy from day one that also includes an academic component similarly to that of the Philadelphia Union. But with that goal, it does mean that San Diego must build inroads quickly.
“The differentiating factor is the timetable that we’re on. This one is accelerated compared to the LAFC build because we’re not building the stadium and also the market is different,” Penn said reflecting on how this compares to getting LAFC off the ground. “There’s only the other men’s professional team here, the Padres, and in LA, we’re like the 10th team into the marketplace and the third men’s professional soccer team so it was a different sort of challenge there. In this case, we have the opportunity to be way more macro-relevant to our entire community and that gives us a responsibility to represent the community well.”
With Manny Machado as part of the ownership group, San Diego are already ensuring that they have partnerships with other teams in the area but also as San Diego Loyal went defunct due to not being able to find a stadium, the club needs to be conscious of that when connecting with the community. It could take a long time to win over everyone but doing things the right way and representing San Diego talent will go a long way to moving the needle in the right direction. With Lozano, there’s now a star to hitch things to but it’s all about what San Diego do next to keep their chrome ball rolling.
