Indio – San Diego FC I had not yet played an MLS opponent when the team players dropped off one of the fields maintained at the Empire Polo Club earlier this month to face New York in a pre-season exhibition. Locating a particular player, a small army of children precipitated the white closure keeping the field and burst into a song which is intended to become one of the most popular in the league of this season.
“”He Chucky Lozano!“, They called rhythmically and in unison, repeating the cry that followed Lozano since the opening match of the opening match 2018 World Cup.
San Diego, an expansion team that will inflate MLS at 30 clubs when he opened his first season against the defending league champion Galaxy Sunday in Dignity Health Sports Park, may not have a regular season victory, a culture or a story. But he already has a star in Lozano, a 29 -year -old Mexican striker who has spent the past eight years in Europe.
“Chucky,” said Tom Penn, the team manager “was our signature player”.
Penn has already tried this. As president LaftcHe made the 29 -year -old Mexican striker Carlos Vela the signing player for the first season of this team in 2018 and that worked fairly well, with Vela the MLS score record a year later, then led the team with two appearances in the MLS Cup final.
However, Lozano did not come to San Diego to break records – although it would be a good bonus. What attracted it was the city, the league and the club's ties to the Dream to Dream Youth Academy, a series of colleges and residential training centers founded in Ghana and now in four countries by the co -owner of the San Diego FC, Mohamed Mansour.
“The whole San Diego project, the right to dream, the club. All of this caught my attention,” said Lozano in Spanish. “This is why I chose San Diego.”
Football fans are waiting for Chucky Lozano from San Diego FC to sign autographs.
(Ben Nichols / San Diego FC)
Doing this project will succeed will be a challenge, but the team is not based exactly on a virgin canvas. The right to dream academies, which nourish young players in a holistic way in football and education, have graduated from 260 students, sending more than 150 players to professional clubs and over 65 to national teams. And San Diego coach Mikey Varas said the success provides a base for his nascent MLS team.
“We are not starting to start from scratch because we already have a model,” said Varas, whose only senior management experience was a stay of two games as an acting coach of the American national team. “This is how to adapt it to make it unique and accessible and successful in MLS.
“I want a pure alignment. Whether it is a new project or an established pure alignment – Leadership coach, players' coach, supporter coach. This kind of diamond is the most important thing. ”
Important because, as an extension club, San Diego has neither a culture to define her nor a story on which to withdraw. Varas said this year's team will be responsible for building the two.
“The club will be here in 100 years. We are not,” he said. “So when the club is able to get back, it will come back to what we are doing and the steps we take at the moment.
“This is a massive responsibility. Because you do not affect your gift, but you will really affect the trajectory of the club 50, 100 years in the future.”
To do this, San Diego has assembled an eclectic list of players from 14 countries. Among them is the veteran of the World Cup Luca de la Torre, former LAFC players Pablo Sisniega And Tomás ángel, former English defender of the Premier League Paddy McNair and Dream Right, graduated Ema Boateng, who spent three seasons with the Galaxy.
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Ema Boateng du San Diego FC speaks during the ribbon cup ceremony for the right to the new installation of Dream in El Cajon, California.
“Being a team of expansion, the right thing is that there is no plan for us,” said Boateng, who also played for Columbus, DC United and New England, all original MLS clubs. “We can mold it in our own way. We define examples for future generations and we set the bar for our fans.”
Like Lozano, Boateng was also attracted to San Diego by his links with the right to dream. Boateng, who was born in Ghana and who grew up in a house without running water or electricity, started his football trip to the Academy at the age of 12. He has torn while delivering a moving speech at the Ribbon Cup for Dream from Dream from Dream to Dream in El Cajon, California, where the MLS team will also train.
“I am forever full of gratitude when I think of the right to dream,” he said later. “At first, it was essentially a charity that helped me and gave me a chance. Now it's an organization I play for. “
“I have done many teams where the word family was used,” he added. “It really looks like the family. It is an organization that gave me everything I have now. ”
It also looks like the Lozano family, whose first name is Hirving, not Chucky. The nickname was hung on to him by players from the Pachuca youth system who thought that 11 -year -old Lozano, looked like the diabolical red chucky doll in the series of “Child Play” horror films.
And Lozano kissed him, hiding under beds to scare his teammates. Now, he adopts his role as a signature player on an MLS extension franchise – which is why he dwelled long after this first match to surround the signature field of innographers and pose for photos with the children who welcomed him by singing his name.
“The complete San Diego project, everything around San Diego, the City, people, part of this has attracted my attention,” he said.
Lozano hopes that the rest of the MLS will soon pay attention to San Diego.
