Ninety minutes of drumming and chanting provides soccer pulse at USD. The outcome is secondary to the experience.
Three years after inception, the San Diego Loyal soccer club, very much alive and still kicking, will open its third season Saturday with a 7 p.m. match at USD’s Torero Stadium.
Landon Donovan is back for his third season, too, as head coach and top soccer executive, although not before Vassiliadis, in response to MLS overtures, signed him to a new contact that runs through 2023. Without the drum-banging, horn-clanging, flag-waving, chant-yelling, song-singing aficionados who exhaust themselves for 90-plus minutes, the event would feel less festive. The soccer vibe would vanish.
Nor should SD Loyal count on Donovan for a number of years. If his team were to make a playoff run, won’t it step up efforts to land the former LA Galaxy star after whom the MLS’ MVP award is named? Like it was with former Padres leaders Bruce Bochy and Dave Roberts, who went on to direct San Francisco and Los Angeles to World Series titles, wealthier markets may be in Donovan’s future.
Whether San Diego’s fan base can sustain an MLS club in San Diego is an open question. Let’s just stick to the fun-and-games aspect that’s so often lost. SD Loyal fans seem to have themselves a heck of a time, whatever Donovan’s club wins or loses.