He’d be the first to downplay it, to direct attention towards the players on the pitch and fans in the stands.
Yet San Diego FC’s clash with LAFC at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night (10:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+), the first-ever meeting of the two Southern California sides, is a past-meets-present moment for Tom Penn nonetheless.
As SDFC’s CEO, he’s led the expansion side from conception to construction to launch, much as he did for LAFC as the club’s first president, a key figure in what’s widely considered one of the most successful startups in league history. This weekend, his past project will serve as a measuring stick of sorts for his present one, as fledgling San Diego test themselves against a certified member of the MLS elite with the additional intensity of a civic rivalry with deep roots.
“Just really looking forward to seeing another home match,” Penn told MLSsoccer.com on Thursday evening, “another sold-out house, and the beginning of the San Diego-Los Angeles soccer experiences – I can't say a rivalry yet, because it sort of will develop on its own, in its own way, but certainly [there’s] a lot more attention, interest any time a San Diego sports team hosts an LA sports team down here.”
Deep-rooted rivalry
As the smaller, more laid-back foil to sprawling, globally renowned LA, San Diego collectively tends to take particular delight in getting the better of the neighboring metropolis to the north. While the cities undoubtedly have distinct personalities, which SDFC nodded to with its ‘proud not loud’ tagline, it’s also fueled by loss, the NBA’s Clippers and NFL’s Chargers having relocated up Interstate 5 in years past.
That history was in the foreground as SDFC kicked off its inaugural season with a road upset of the defending MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy on opening weekend, a memorable occasion witnessed in person by hundreds of traveling fans who’d love to see a similar result on home turf on Matchday 6.
“It'll be really cool over time to see how the SoCal derbies play out like this, because there's a natural adjacency and intensity around it,’ said Penn. “You have the long history of Padres-Dodgers and sort of the interwoven history of teams that have relocated to Los Angeles from San Diego. We look forward to representing San Diego in the global game for a long time.”
Parallels can be drawn between how the two clubs took shape. Both sketched out their early identities with minimalist monikers and evocative color schemes – ‘Black & Gold,’ ‘Chrome & Azul’ – and worked with fans to create space for supporter culture to take root. With Designated Players Carlos Vela and Hirving ‘Chucky’ Lozano, both signed creative Mexican wingers as cornerstones of their attack.
Uniquely San Diego
That said, Penn has observed how circumstances on the ground inevitably influence a markedly different set of priorities for the 2025 debutants.
“The two main differences here was the pace of this one, a much faster pace – under two years from idea to playing games is way faster than what LAFC was,” he noted, with Snapdragon’s existence allowing for a faster runup compared to the timeline of BMO Stadium’s construction in downtown Los Angeles.
“The second is the ability to be macro-relevant to this entire community down here. The Padres are the only other major men's professional sports team, so we're the second team into the market from a major league standpoint, and the [NWSL’s] Wave are here as well,” he added.
“In Los Angeles, at the inception of LAFC, there were two of everything: NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, USC, UCLA, you keep going. And there had already been two men's MLS teams. So in that case, there was a whole lot of question around, ‘why do we need another one of these?’ And here, from the beginning, there's been just huge excitement around the entire community.”
Right to Dream stronghold
Other significant differences are becoming more evident on the pitch as SDFC’s first season unfolds. Many are driven by the club’s membership in the Right to Dream global network and the ensuing focus on youth development.
The Chrome & Azul built their game model on RTD principles of play and are currently in the process of selecting their first class of young prospects for their residential academy program at the Sharp HealthCare Performance Center, where the first season will launch in late summer.
“While we are a startup in Major League Soccer, we are not a startup from a soccer operation,” said Penn. “There's a clear, defined style of play. There's a clear identity on what we want to be. We've got a pipeline of youth coming along that have been developing in Ghana and Egypt and Denmark, and there's a professional club in Denmark, so we join that family, and we express the MLS version of the Right to Dream way at the first team level. And that's been hugely helpful.”
While the first crop of SDFC homegrown signings are years away, by design, the youth focus is already being applied to coach Mikey Varas’ roster, which includes 10 players aged 22 or younger. Next month, RTD’s “International Academy,” a selection of top prospects ages 16 to 18 from across the alliance, will visit San Diego for joint sessions with SDFC.
“We're building the US version of Right to Dream from the bottom up, meaning we're starting with 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds who we've been scouting across the entire region, and we’re just gearing up to make our first offers of scholarship to those boys,” noted Penn.
“They end up having the best experience possible at a residential facility on our property on the Sycuan tribal reservation, where they get the best possible football training, education and character development. And that'll be the beginning for us here. It'll be complimentary, interwoven with Right to Dream in Europe and Africa, and it'll pay off for years and decades to come.”
Dreyer fills the Chucky void
Despite Lozano being sidelined by a hamstring injury in their home opener on March 1, SDFC have defied expectations with a 2W-1L-2D start that's pushed them to fourth place in the Western Conference and 10th in the Supporters' Shield standings. A good chunk of that success has been driven by his fellow DP and right-flank counterpart Anders Dreyer, one of the brightest creative forces of the young season.
He’ll be crucial to his side’s hopes of outpacing Denis Bouanga and LAFC’s battle-tested squad. And he may even get some help from Chucky, who Varas expects to be on the bench for Saturday's clash.
“We were really excited about Anders because of the way he has performed everywhere he's been. Each time he's jumped into a new league, a new country, he has performed, scored and stepped up,” said Penn. “He's only 26 years old, but at that age, he's right in the peak prime of his playing days, and he's on the rise. And he has a special quality, special intensity, and we think he's really going to be a consistent performer for us.
“We really look forward to getting Chucky back, because with Chucky back, what you're just going to see is a bit of more of a dynamic duo on the wings. They had established a real chemistry together during our training camp, and they played really well together in the one full match at LA and they'll put a lot of pressure on defenses because of their speed and their connectivity.”
