What We Know About San Diego FC’s Technical Operation So Far
*As I’m sure you guessed I’m not from the US, so please forgive any Britishisms in my writing.*
2023 saw many milestones for newly-inaugurated MLS club San Diego FC. In May the ownership group was officially revealed with Mohamed Mansour being unveiled as the primary owner via Man Capital. This also tied in with Right to Dream, a non-profit organisation founded in the late 90s by ex-Manchester United scout Tom Vernon (a founding partner of San Diego FC) who began the academy in Ghana with his wife and has expanded its outreach to Denmark via FC Nordsjaelland and most recently Egypt. Notably the Sycuan Tribe became the first Native American ownership group in global football via their stake in the club and San Diego Padres star Manny Machado is also an owner. Brad Termini, Tom Penn and Dan Dickinson round off the ownership group.
As the year continued more San Diego FC news rolled out. The location and renderings of the MLS first-team squad facility and Right to Dream academy was announced alongside a ceremony to break ground for the project on Sycuan land. The branding (more thoughts on this later) was revealed, Ricardo Campos moved over from now defunct San Diego Loyal to become Executive Vice President of Club Operations and 17 year-old Duran Ferree earned his place in history as the club’s first ever signing.
SDFC will take to the pitch in 2025 and with the exception of Duran Ferree, as of yet there are no players on the club’s senior or academy squads. So far there is no technical director, though the club is in the process of recruiting one, and no first team head coach. We do however have some idea as to who is making sporting/technical decisions at the moment.
The most concrete name we know of is Tyler Heaps, Group Head of Recruitment & Insights at Right to Dream, who it appears will support SDFC’s squad build out for 2025. The American was previously Director of Sporting Analytics at US Soccer and most recently Head of Sporting Technology & Insights at AS Monaco. If you’ve got the time, you can hear him speak about his work with US Soccer alongside other football analytics heavyweights here. After this we’ll need to do a little more digging…
Thanks to this photo posted on Twitter from Supporter Relations manager Jerry Jimenez, we can do some LinkedIn investigating to find out a little more.
James Bunce left his Director of Performance role at AS Monaco in November and was previously Director of High Performance at US Soccer. If you have access to The Athletic, in this article James talks about the improvement of AS Monaco’s physical performance metrics and player availability after he and fellow Englishman Paul Mitchell’s arrival — impressive stuff. It remains to be seen if he’ll be part of Right to Dream’s overarching structure or SDFC’s day to day operations as there has been no announcement.
Next up is Carsten Dohm, who, according to LinkedIn, is Head of Coaching at Right to Dream and will spend time in San Diego. From my understanding, this role in football tends to be based on implementing coaching methodology from the first team all the way through down to the academy — ensuring there is consistency of standards.
Ian Yates is Group Head of Talent ID & Pathways at Right to Dream. To a layman like me, the first thing that used to come to mind was “he’s a scout”. But after doing further research, there’s far more to Talent ID when it comes to youth development. Relative age effect, early/late maturation, puberty, scouting biases and the impact of early specialisation are all big topics in this space. My guess is Ian will be focused on these things and more.
Mads Davidsen is Group Head of Football at Right to Dream and appears to have experience in implementing long-term strategies in different cultural contexts. He’s co-authored a book, which I’m not going to pretend I’ve read.
Looking at SDFC’s post about their scouting and MLS Next, we can see three additional figures.
Jeremy Seethal, featured in this video, is Head of Global Talent Scouting at Right to Dream. In this article in The Athletic, he talks about the attitude European clubs have towards African talent.
Anders Jensen is Global Emerging Talent scout at Right to Dream. He’s a former Chelsea scout, joining them at 19!
Derek Boateng is a former professional footballer and Ghana International. Notably he played for AIK Athens and Getafe. He seems to have been a big part of the scouting of Right to Dream’s first cohort of academy players in Egypt.
What can we glean from all this? In my view, it appears Right to Dream have a technical/sporting structure in place. Theoretically, this should make subsequent technical hirings at SDFC easier as the playing style and coaching methodology should already be set. Meaning that the new SDFC scouts who are hired for the first team and academy (we’ve already seen job postings) will know which profile of players to look for and a head coach will be recruited who fits the playing style the technical group wants. This should make continuity easier as the playing style and squad will be less susceptible to the whims of a manager. This is a current trend we are seeing in modern football.
My short thoughts on the branding are as follows…
As someone who has some experience in creative strategy and media strategy in creative and media buying agencies, I’ve come around to not hate it but it could’ve been much better. It seems to me the issue was with the briefing of the design agency or the strategy. A big deal was made of wanting to represent all 18 communities in the branding. We use strategy to provide clarity and direction — to inspire work, not dictate it. It appears to me that rather than find a central idea/theme/insight that unites the 18 communities of San Diego and use that to inspire the design of the crest, whoever wrote the strategy forced the creatives to represent the 18 communities in the most literal way possible. Leading to what we have now with the “flow” design. I also think the use of the “chrome” gradient makes it difficult to adapt the use of the logo across mediums — the opposite of what we are seeing in branding in the digital age.
What’s funny is that I don’t necessarily hate the other ideas presented in the brand pack — I think they’re pretty interesting. As an outsider I know some San Diegans don’t see the colours as quintessentially San Diegan, but brands create mental associations over time.
