It was just over a month ago when the announcement of San Diego getting the 30th expansion club in Major League Soccer came down like a lightning bolt from the soccer gods. Two days later the community came out in droves to the “Let’s Kick It Party” at Snapdragon Stadium where soccer fans from all around the county came to interact and get a feel for what the vibe on game day will be like.

Since then, San Diego FC (the temporary working name that San Diego MLS goes by), has organized several events throughout the county gathering input as to what the final product will look like before the team hits the pitch in 2025. I recently got a chance to sit down with San Diego FC President Tom Penn to discuss topics including what else fans should expect, how he became involved in the project, and the arrival of the league of Lionel Messi to MLS.

Q: How far back does your vision of MLS in San Diego go and does it go back as far as San Diego’s original bid for MLS expansion?

A: No, it’s very recent. I was very focused on LAFC and getting that started and successful, but then COVID hit. After transitioning out of LAFC, a friend of mine named Brent Lawrence, who is from San Diego, and is an investment banker with his company Accelerate Sports reached out to me. Lawrence said he was involved with some people with the San Diego Loyal and some people in San Diego and asked if I had some interest to collaborate. At that time, I thought it was interesting because I believe San Diego is a perfect market for Major League Soccer and in that window of time Sacramento had been declared as the 30th team. The next time I was meeting with Lawrence was the night before the Sacramento deal cratered very publicly. All of a sudden a 30th team was open and then it was just a natural thing to think San Diego is the perfect market for MLS, there’s a stadium being built that’s designed for MLS, and all we really need now is the right investors so that just sharpened our focus on San Diego and this opportunity.

Q: Since the public event at Snapdragon on May 20, what has been the game plan in terms of interacting more with the fans?

A: Well it’s interesting, we did six events in four days and immediately after that we sort of took a breath and that was right on the heels of closing the deal. Now we’re regrouping and we’re building the organization, so we’re in the process of making some key hires, we’re in the process of determining where our corporate headquarters will be, where our football headquarters will be and we’re organizing our plans for what our engagement with the community will be in the run-up.

We have stayed active in our supporter relations, we’ve had a couple of really encouraging supporter meetings with the leaders and we’re scheduling our next supporter engagement that’s going to be more broadly opened up to more members of the public. We are already seeing such great early momentum and buy-in, passion, and shared values. We really want to hear what our supporter leaders truly want this club to be and let them co-create what our supporter engagement is going to be giving us a chance to form the foundation of what we’re all about.

We’re also working on our brand and finishing off the ideas for our crest and our colors with a lot of good feedback that’s informed a lot of our decisions. We are working that through the channels at MLS and Adidas and then we’ll be ready to announce something to the public.

Q: Will you be relying on youth or more of a mix with established players when it comes time to hit the pitch in 2025?

A: It’s both. The other foundational work that we’re doing is building and planning for our academy. As you know, with Right To Dream in the mix, we’re going to have the incredible opportunity to do this state-of-the-art and best-in-class academy in the Americas. We need to get that planned, designed, contracted, and built, so while all of that is happening we’re going to be scouting and thinking of that first-team talent. We see a mix of experienced players who play our style, from the beginning we want to play the Right To Dream way.

If you watch FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark, they nearly won the league with the youngest team in the world. They finished just outside of first place, they qualified for European competition and they play just a beautiful brand of football that we’re going to play. It’s total football, it’s building out of the back, it’s high press upfront, it’s on the front foot, but it’s very technical as well, it’s awesome.

We’re going to be hiring our football operations folks who will then interface with the broader Right To Dream group and be very focused on what happens in Denmark this whole next season. It will be a thoughtful integration of styles of play and then a layering in of players both experienced and young that are going to fit that style of play so we can hit the ground running in 2025.

Q: What were your first thoughts when you heard Messi was going to join Major League Soccer?

A: I was surprised even though I knew this was in the works and knew this was a possibility. Just like everyone else I thought that Saudi Arabia and the money were too much to pass up, but I’m just thrilled. I’m thrilled he’s coming because Messi and Ronaldo are the two who are just in a different stratosphere from a top-of-mind and general public interest. To have Messi playing MLS in less than a month is just amazing.

The impact has been incredibly exciting even locally here, if you look at the ticket sales of our deposits, we have a very active deposit drumbeat going on where every day we have a whole lot of people sign up expressing their intent to buy tickets and reserve their spot. In the window right around the Messi announcement we had about a ten-fold increase just like that, so you see this ripple effect everywhere with him being here right next to the 2026 World Cup. So you have this double boost in Major League Soccer for the foreseeable future and it’s right when we come into the league, so it’s really exciting.

Q: How do expect the other professional leagues that have teams in San Diego to be impacted by the arrival of MLS?

A: We have the intention to be collaborative and additive to the entire community. I’d love to see us helping lower-division professional clubs and I would like to see the Wave continue to kick everyone’s butt out there, I’d love to see us against LA. I want to see San Diego against the rest of the country, San Diego against Xolos, and San Diego against a Liga MX team, but we’re all aligned in the community.

There’s work to do when it comes to getting youth clubs collaborating together and to get professional clubs to collaborate together because that’s our goal and we want to do our part in that, understanding that’s a complex dynamic but one we want to shoot for. Our ethos is the conviction that everyone has the right to dream.

Q: Any final words to the fans out there who can’t wait for the team to finally hit the pitch?

A: What I encourage the fans to do is to go and reserve their spot if they haven’t done it. We have the ability to capture intention and interest in buying tickets, and we’ve sold way more than I expected way quicker. I encourage everyone to go on our website https://sandiegofc.com/ and kind of join that way so we can engage over time on what’s available, so I encourage everyone at this point to jump in while you can.