What started with four guys, a few laptops, and a bunch of data might turn into something special for the MLS expansion side
In the beginning, for San Diego FC, it was three guys in a room, with laptops, and a club to form. They didn’t have a manager, technical staff or any players. Instead, they had data – lots of it.
It was an odd environment, at first, San Diego Sporting Director Tyler Heaps admitted. There were numbers to be crunched, players to be analyzed, and previous examples to be studied. It was hard to know where to start.
Well, that was just more than a year ago, and San Diego are now not only the best team in the Western Conference, but also have a decent claim – through 25 games – to being the best MLS expansion franchise in recent memory. Their expansion – pun intended – has been a rapid, data-driven approach in which an incoming club cut through noise, expectations and soccer preconceptions to construct a team capable of competing in MLS. Immediately.
And their dreams aren’t exactly slowing down.
“There’s still a ways to go, but so far so good,” CEO Tom Penn told GOAL.
Getty Images Sport'Nothing brings an entire community together like a properly executed sports team'
San Diego FC was an interesting proposition from day one. The expansion franchise was one of those that just made sense. The city had all of the right characteristics for MLS – demographics, market size, area appeal. But a professional franchise had yet to get off the ground.
The nearby San Diego Loyal had their fans, but the USL Championship side folded in 2023. And while the San Diego Wave were a talent factory in NWSL, there was room for a men’s soccer setup to get to work.
“Nothing brings an entire community together like a properly executed sports team,” Penn said. “These are the modern day campfires that bring everyone together for shared experiences where you cheer and hug and cry together.”
But saying the right things, paying a $500 million expansion fee, and getting the goodwill of league commissioner Don Garber is one thing. Actually building a team that can compete, without an academy, is another altogether. Yet San Diego have done it in style.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportRight to Dream and 'unique backgrounds'
Their big advantage is the Right to Dream system. In 25 years, Right to Dream has gone from a talent identification center founded by a former Manchester United scout to a global football empire, owned by a conglomerate worth billions. It is truly a remarkable soccer story.
Tom Vernon, Man United’s former head scout in Africa, started an independent boys' training school in Accra – mostly relying on volunteers. Over time, further academies popped up around Africa, while American colleges started to show interest in bringing in talent on scholarships.
Investment into professional soccer clubs followed. As of 2025, Right to Dream is involved in three professional clubs: Denmark’s FC Nordsjælland, Egypt’s FC Masar, and, most recently, San Diego FC. The academy has developed more than 150 professionals from scratch.
That’s where Heaps came from. He joined the Right to Dream network in 2023, and immersed himself in the system entirely. He traveled to Ghana, Egypt and Denmark – and spent most of his time listening.
“I'm a person of few words, and I'm so used to being behind the scenes and working that I quite enjoyed just listening to people and learning from people,” Heaps said.
Within a year of joining the system, he was running recruitment at Nordsjælland, while also offering advice to San Diego as the franchise began to take shape. San Diego officially announced him as their sporting director in August 2024 – making him the youngest one in the league.
“My background is quite unique,” he says. “It's football, but it's also objectivity and numbers and finance. And so I kind of tried to understand everything. I don't foresee myself being an ‘expert’ in anything, but I just try to have a really good knowledge of a number of different subjects.”
Getty Images Sport'We got offered every bad contract in the league'
And a good thing, too, because Heaps was handed a glut of information and numbers. Some of it came from his own experience with Right to Dream. Others were from third parties and consultants. His first task was deciding what, exactly, was applicable.
“We had a lot of third-party consultants that put together a lot of information, largely before I arrived, so I kind of tried to take in all of theirs, and took some of it on. Some of it maybe wasn't relevant,” Heaps said.
As a result, San Diego were sometimes painstakingly cautious. They evaluated everything, asking questions about where their model could succeed, and where it might fail. Without a true academy setup, it was admittedly difficult. There were no extra options to throw into the team, no pre-developed talent to flesh the squad out should things fall apart.
So they consumed as much information about players as they possibly could. A small staff watched hours of MLS and MLS Next Pro. They identified free agents that could make an impact while still keeping the ownership under the league’s restrictive salary cap.
“It was a daunting task, but I think we have really good people, and we used our network,” Heaps said. “We were fortunate that we have a lot of people that have been across a lot of different environments, and so they reached out and got insights.”
And as important as it was to sign the right players, it was equally vital to avoid the wrong ones. San Diego needed to be agile, forward thinking, and looking into the areas where others weren’t. That meant ignoring the wrong offers.
“I think we got offered every bad contract in the league,” Heaps said. “The good part about being an expansion team is that you don't have bad contracts. So we were able to avoid those mistakes.”
Getty Images Sport'We had six players for a long time, and no one knew who any of them were'
The early names didn’t exactly jump off the page. San Diego brought in, effectively, a variety of question marks. Mikey Varas had a brief stint as the USMNT’s interim manager before Mauricio Pochettino was hired, but hadn’t coached a single minute of Major League Soccer.
Meanwhile, their first signings, European journeymen Jeppe Tverskov and Marcus Ingvartsen, were largely unknown by those in America who weren’t Football Manager addicts.
“We had six players for a long time, and no one knew who any of them were,” Heaps said.
And then came the big swing. Hirving “Chucky” Lozano was disgruntled at PSV, and falling out of the picture for the Dutch giants. A new era was on the horizon, and it was clear that he wouldn’t be a part of it. San Diego struck, bringing in one of the most famous Mexican footballers on the planet as the first Designated Player signing in club history.
He has offered a certain star power and marketable verve for a team that otherwise seemed to be about the collective. San Diego needed to sell jerseys, and Lozano offered the perfect way to do so. It helped, too, that he still has some football left in him – something his 15 goal contributions in 20 games has proved.
“He’s different from the rest of us in that he has to manage all of the attention,” Tverskov said. “His life can be a little different than ours… but he’s ended up getting really into how we want to do everything.”
Otherwise, though, the front office was fairly frugal. In January, they brought in Luca de la Torre on loan and signed Anders Dreyer to a permanent deal. The latter was a designated player, but he makes $2.3 million per year – hardly a massive outlay for a player who operates outside of standard salary cap restrictions.
“Outside of Hirving, I would argue that we're probably among the bottom five spenders in the league,” Heaps said.