Tag: San Diego MLS

USL Championship side San Diego Loyal will fold after 2023 season

The USL franchise was under threat after MLS awarded San Diego an expansion team for the 2025 season

The San Diego Loyal will cease operations after the 2023 USL Championship season, the club has announced.

In a statement, USL said that the decision was made because a “viable near- and long-term stadium solution in the market did not materialize.” The club has been playing at Torero Stadium on the campus of the University of San Diego.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that this will be the last season for San Diego Loyal,” the club’s owner Andrew Vassiliadis said in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“For those of you who got to know me, spent some time talking to me, you know how much this hurts for me to say. I love our city, I was born and raised here, and I will always be loyal to San Diego.

“I don’t see myself taking this project anywhere else, and I refuse to put an inferior product in front of you.”

The long-term viability of the Loyal was put into doubt this May, when MLS awarded San Diego an expansion franchise that will begin play in 2025.

At the time, Vassiliadis issued a statement declaring his intent to continue on, concluding: “Our plan is simple. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Vassiliadis started the franchise in 2020 alongside co-owner and U.S. soccer legend Landon Donovan, who served as the team’s head coach for three seasons. After the 2022 season, Donovan stepped down as coach and took a role as executive VP of soccer operations.

The USL said the Loyal’s franchise rights will be transfered to a new ownership group.

“Having a modern, commercially viable stadium solution is vital to our clubs’ long-term success and is a pillar of the USL’s growth strategy,” said USL Deputy CEO Justin Papadakis. “Despite collectively pursuing multiple potential options with SD Loyal’s leadership in the San Diego area, an appropriate stadium solution has not materialized.”

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The newest MLS team will have a very uncreative name

FC San Diego or San Diego FC will join the league in 2025

The newest MLS franchise will use one of the oldest name templates in the books.

At Thursday’s official unveiling of San Diego as the league’s 30th team, club CEO Tom Penn said that it would either be named FC San Diego or San Diego FC.

“We want to be either be San Diego Football Club, so San Diego FC, or should we put the football first? Should it be Football Club of San Diego, like FC San Diego?” Penn told reporters.

“So we had to pick one to start, and we’ll see which way it goes. But that’s the fundamental question right out of the block: 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 sometime summer or early fall, we’ll do another big announcement to show our real brand.”

The naming convention would put San Diego alongside eight current teams whose names are a variation of their city plus the “FC” abbrevation: Charlotte FC, FC Cincinnati, New York City FC, Toronto FC, Austin FC, FC Dallas, and Los Angeles FC.

In other words, when San Diego enters MLS in 2025, those teams will make up nearly one-third of the league.

The club could have really gone on a limb if it just tweaked one letter: Nashville SC is the only MLS team to use the aforementioned naming convention, but with a SC instead of an FC.

We’ll just give Cozmo the last word here.

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New MLS stadiums: Future sites and rumors

MLS’s construction push continues apace

Over the last eight years, MLS has really upped its game in terms of stadiums.

Between new expansion teams coming into the league and existing clubs building new homes, MLS has found itself in 12 new venues over that time period. Of that group, 11 are soccer-specific, meaning the league has never had better conditions on gameday than it has right now.

If anything, MLS’s pace in terms of building stadiums has accelerated of late, with five new arenas opening since the start of 2021. That push will continue in the years to come, with projects in Miami and New York City in progress and expansion in San Diego bringing another new venue into the league.

Here are MLS’s future stadiums.