San Diego awarded Major League Soccer franchise

San Diego has officially been announced as the home of the newest Major League Soccer club  the league’s 30th team – fighting off competition from Las Vegas to begin playing at the 35,000 capacity Snapdragon Stadium in 2025.

British-Egyptian businessman Mohamed Mansour will own the club along with the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, the Californian Native American tribe.

The successful Right To Dream Academy [RTD], founded by English coach Tom Vernon and owned by Mansour’s London-based investment firm Man Capital, has formed an ambitious partnership with the Sycuan Tribe and intends to invest heavily in scouting, recruitment and academy football in America.

READ ALSOMLS to unveil new team in San Diego after record fee

RTD began life as an academy for U12s in Ghana 23 years ago, successfully nurturing under-privileged children, including some who had been living rough on the streets. Many graduates now progress to careers in US football and the Ghanaian national team.

Vernon took his RTD academy model to Europe in 2015 with Danish Superliga club FC Nordsjaelland, who are currently second in the table, with the youngest top division side in world football.

“In Europe we’re pretty confident that there aren’t any 12-year-olds with the potential to play in the Champions League one day that everyone doesn’t know about,” Vernon explains.

“Whereas in America that’s not the case. With the ‘pay-to-play’ soccer model many kids are excluded from the good clubs because they can’t afford it. We felt there was a real need for our model. Doing it with San Diego, close to the Mexican border, makes sense.

“Tom Penn, formerly of Los Angeles FC, was hired by the Sycuan Tribe to build a club and he will be the new chief executive. Tom and I have been working like crazy to pull this together over the last year. He’s been to our academies in Ghana, Denmark and Egypt so he’s seen the whole vision and he will now have the mandate to put the American imprint on this.