The last beam was placed Friday on the frame for a training facility that will house San Diego's first-ever Major League Soccer team, ushering in the next phase of the project.
“We have a professional training facility for the San Diego Football Club here on the Sycuan Indian reservation, one of the first of its kind in the nation on sovereign tribal land,” Syquan Band Chairman Cody Martinez said. “We are very excited.”
As the club’s co-owner and tribe council chairman for the Syquan band, Cody Martinez said this is special. Sycuan is a part of the Kumeyaay nation, San Diego’s indigenous tribe. The facility will pay homage to the people who nurtured the land first.
“We're going to look forward to having cultural elements infused through the design,” Martinez said.
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By the end of 2024, the 50,000-square-foot facility will be done.
There’s already one person on the team's roster. Goalkeeper Duran Ferree is training in Orange County. SDFC needs 27 more players to make up the team.
Just steps away from the training facility will be a boarding school for prospective players as young as 12. It’s called the "Right to Dream Youth Development Academy," and it will host 130 teens at a time on full scholarships.
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This is already happening in Ghana, Egypt and Denmark.
“We're going to find the best 12-year-olds with the most talent and the most potential,” said Tom Penn, San Diego Football Club CEO. “As they develop, most could go on to play professionally. They all aspire to. Those that maybe don't develop the way they think they could or choose to go an educational pathway, we cover that too. Full scholarship to prep school and college, they're covered. They're never kicked out. That's the right to dream way.”
This program is also unique because it’s the only one in the nation allowed to recruit across the U.S.-Mexico border.
FIFA rules state if your headquarters is within 50 kilometers of the border, you can recruit 50 kilometers over the border. SDFC barely made it by being 48 kilometers away from the border.
“We were very careful to measure,” Penn said.
San Diego FC’s first season will begin February 2025. The team has a 30-year lease with Snapdragon Stadium.
