Both of their rises to prominence occurred roughly at the same time and under eerily (but entirely coincidental) similar circumstances. Oakland has the Roots. Whereas in San Diego, the Loyal took hold shortly after their city’s NFL team decamped for Los Angeles, in a funny twist of irony at the time, to play in a soccer stadium.
Both USL teams gave their spurned cities something of their own to believe in again. They built up large fan bases, not by having star-studded rosters, but by being fiercely loyal (pun intended in San Diego) to their places. Talk to fans of either team, and you’ll likely hear phrases like “built from the ground up,” “authentic culture,” or “they want to be here” thrown around a lot when describing why each team has resonated.
The Loyal and Roots debuted only a season apart and have been tethered together ever since—where the latter even bounced the former in the first round of the playoffs last year. They’re both vying for a top four spot in the western conference again this season.
League observers once characterized Oakland and San Diego as sleeping giants since the organizations ostensibly “bought low” on massive markets. Now, it appears only one will actually get their payoff.
On May 19, Major League Soccer announced that it had awarded San Diego its 30th franchise. Great. The hitch? The Loyal organization would have no part in it. Instead, a British-Egyptian billionaire (and the UK’s Conservative party treasurer) will partner with the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a local casino-operating tribe, to operate a new top-flight team.
The group paid a record $500 million expansion fee to the league and already have a lease in place to play at San Diego State’s new Snapdragon Stadium starting in 2025. While it is sad that the groundwork the Loyal have worked tediously to lay down for years could be swept up from under them, they are not—in the context of American soccer—helpless victims.
The dirty secret in USL is that its flagship teams have openly courted the top flight before. For example, Nashville SC and FC Cincinnati were USL franchises that were spun into MLS teams. Another cornerstone USL team, Sacramento Republic, was slated to join them too until their expansion bid, which had already been accepted, fell apart when a major investor, Ron Burkle (now coincidentally owner of NWSL’s San Diego Wave), pulled out.
Landon Donovan, a U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer and the Loyal’s head of soccer operations, was also previously involved in another ownership group’s failed attempt to bring an MLS team to the city.
His current team remains mum on its future plans after the MLS announcement. A statement released a week before the expansion launch only says that the Loyal “aren’t going anywhere.”
Like the top brass at the Roots, the Loyal were still searching for the right blend of available land and financing to build their own soccer-specific stadium as recently as March. One can only imagine how those conversations must be going now that their growth is undoubtedly capped by larger forces pressing down on top of them.
Inversely, things are starting to fall into place for the Roots. After an awkward impasse over the Coliseum site, the organization announced earlier this month that it had reached a cooperation agreement with the African American Sports & Entertainment Group (AASEG), current exclusive rights holders to the land, to build a modular stadium on the Malibu lot.
Sources within the Roots front office say that despite competing long-term ambitions between the two parties, the latest agreement was a win-win. The city council was eager to throw its support behind the popular Roots and Soul teams after the recent A’s debacle, and the pitch to AASEG was that the value of the land would only increase with the involvement of professional teams.
Should AASEG want the Malibu lot for something else, the stadium is designed so that it could be quickly taken apart and moved.
As I’ve previously written, a new stadium would open more revenue streams allowing for the Roots to continue to grow. This rosy picture has already put a fully professional women’s team in frame. And if/once the A’s manage to leave town, that would leave professional soccer as the biggest sports draw in town.
Momentum and timing is with the Roots, and unfortunately not for the Loyal. It played out similarly on the pitch Saturday night when Oakland put away San Diego 2-0 at Pioneer Stadium behind goals from Johnny Rodriguez and Anuar Peláez, who finally broke his scoreless run since joining the team this year.
One can’t help but notice the coincidence that today’s game played out on the same day Luton Town miraculously clawed its way back into the Premier League from the fifth tier. I’d venture a guess that the fairytale probably wouldn’t have hit quite the same way had a new flashy club just plopped into town and replaced the hundred-year-old institution.
But alas, here we are—a constant state of flux where money moves mountains and most of the organic growth seems to happen more overseas rather than here.
The powers that be will continue to do as they please, but they ought to heed Rebecca Welton’s recent advice once in a while: “Just because we own these teams, doesn’t mean they belong to us.”
About the Author: Kevin V. Nguyen has covered soccer for The Guardian, The Sacramento Bee, and The San Francisco Standard. Follow him on Twitter @KevinNguyen_89.
