San Diego, CA
San Diego FC’s CEO can turn to a past playbook to fix a new fan problem
San Diego FC CEO and co-owner Tom Penn remembers where he was when the homophobic chants started on Saturday night. He was standing right next to MLS commissioner Don Garber, who had flown in to witness the club’s inaugural home match.
The chant, which has been present in Mexican soccer for decades, started out quietly enough, with a smattering of fans belting out the Spanish word “p**o,” often considered to be a homophobic slur, during opposing goal kicks. Over the course of the match, played against St. Louis City SC, it grew in intensity. By the second half, it became something Penn and Garber could no longer ignore.
MLS has its own roadmap for dealing with the chant, borrowed from FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and it was enacted late in the match. Fans were warned via the video board and an in-stadium audio announcement to stop doing the chant on three occasions. The last of those warnings added an additional threat that the match could be abandoned.
Standing next to Garber, Penn now says he was “disappointed but not super surprised” at the presence of the chant. “We certainly knew it was a possibility given the history and where we’re located,” Penn told The Athletic on Tuesday. “But we didn’t know (whether it would actually happen or not).”
MLS commissioner Don Garber, right, takes in San Diego FC’s first home match. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
There’s no confusion anymore. The incidents marred the home debut for San Diego, which played to a 0-0 draw in front of a sellout crowd at Snapdragon Stadium, on the heels of upsetting the defending champion LA Galaxy in their season opener. In many ways, the club cannot be blamed for the presence of the chant, and its head coach and sporting director were both quick in expressing their disgust at the fans who’d taken part in it.
The chants heard toward the end of the match emanated from more than just a small handful of supporters, with large segments of the stadium joining in. After years of pushing Mexican teams to eradicate the chant, it is now MLS’s turn to take another swing at one of Concacaf’s most vexing issues.
“It is a very complicated issue,” Penn said. “It’s very emotional and it’s very divisive. But it’s not a difficult position for us to take. Our position is clear: we want to be a club that’s inclusive for all, one that is a source of entertainment and joy and fun. And this is the opposite of that in that it creates such a wedge and it’s so divisive … (The chant) isn’t us. It’s not part of what we’re going to do. So I think really the first step is us stating that. Now the audience that comes knows that. We didn’t pre-state that before our first match, but now we’re going to be very clear about that message.”
GO DEEPER
San Diego FC fans’ actions put MLS expansion club to immediate test
Penn and others at SDFC are actively working on a plan of action to combat future use of the chant, which he says the club will roll out soon. This won’t be his first rodeo when it comes to dealing with this particular problem. Penn was the president at LAFC in 2018, that club’s debut season, and the parallels continue. LAFC was confronted with the chant in its first match, too. And Penn, along with others at the club, were swift to act.
“We had to circle the wagons around here and try to look at best practices,” Penn told The Athletic in 2019, “and we started to discover that there aren’t any. Nobody had a playbook on this. We determined internally as a club that we were going to be very clear and say this is not us. This is not our club. This is not what we stand for. Therefore this behavior will not be tolerated. What was more impressive was that the 3252 [LAFC’s supporters] leadership felt exactly the same.”
Prior to LAFC’s subsequent match, Penn, alongside club captain Laurent Ciman and a contingent of supporters, appeared on the field. They pleaded with fans to discontinue using the chant. It worked. Though it returned briefly later in the season, LAFC hasn’t had to deal with the issue since.
Other MLS clubs have had mixed results when it comes to combatting the issue. The chant used to be a mainstay at Houston Dynamo games until the club and its supporters mounted an effort to eradicate it. Though it’s used less frequently, the chant does at times persist in Houston, as it does in a handful of other MLS stadiums. LAFC’s crosstown rivals, the Galaxy, had their own brief battle with it.
The league itself has led efforts to combat the use of offensive language. It successfully eradicated another goal-kick chant that had become customary — one where supporters belted out “You suck, a**hole!” — some years back.
Globally, successful efforts to end the use of the word used Saturday night typically center around engaging with supporters directly, as Penn and others did at LAFC. In San Diego, Penn says the club’s front office has a strong relationship with its fan groups. The club’s head coach, Mikey Varas, was quick to mention on Saturday that none of the chants had originated with the club’s officially sanctioned supporters groups, which is something Penn eagerly reiterated.
San Diego FC supporters at the club’s inaugural home match. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
“We were 100 percent engaged with our supporters’ leaders both before, during and after the match,” Penn said. “We talked to them in advance of this match, we know 100 percent that it did not come from the supporters. They are exactly aligned with us on this issue and they would like to not have this be part of our experience. It’s not part of our club, it’s not part of us.”
So much of the issue with policing the use of the chant at games is how unpredictable its use is and how difficult it can be to identify individual fans who participate in it. Mexico’s football federation, alongside U.S. Soccer, has poured resources and manpower into combatting the issue, with mixed results. The Mexican federation has gone as far as instituting a “Fan ID” system in recent years, one that is capable of using facial recognition to catch fans in the act.
That sort of technology isn’t actively used in MLS stadiums, though some of the league’s clubs have dabbled in facial recognition in some form or another. Speaking on Tuesday, Penn was clear enough in suggesting that the club would absolutely remove any fan who can be clearly identified as having participated in the chant.
“We’re not gonna reinvent the wheel here, we may very well learn from (LAFC’s) success,” Penn said. “We’re considering the specific steps we can take and then the specific communication — the first part is just the communication of what the expectation is. But I would say we will absolutely be enforcing it and we will eject those that are clearly (using discriminatory language). We’ll see how all those action steps that we take in our next match work, and then we’ll modify from there.”
Penn and many others are hoping that San Diego can mirror LAFC’s success. Hopefully it’s as easy as having an impassioned conversation with the club’s fanbase. For now, though, a problem so frequently viewed as one that encompasses only Mexican teams once again belongs to an American one.
“Our first match was so magnificent in so many ways,” Penn said. “And we’re establishing ourselves as a new product in this market. It was 99 good things, but this is the one thing everybody likes to talk about in the moment.”
(Top image: Illustration by Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic; Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for LA84 Foundation)
SOUTH BAY (KGTV) — The funeral for Julian Guerrero, the 15-year-old boy found dead inside Otay Valley Regional Park on Friday, May 15, is set for this Saturday at noon at Funeraria del Angel Chula Vista.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family with funeral expenses.
As his family prepares to lay him to rest, Julian’s mother said she is still waiting for answers about whether more could have been done to save him.
Julian was first reported missing on Thursday, May 14. The following morning, his missing persons flyers circulated across social media.
Neighbors were seen scouring the South Bay looking for him.
Then on Friday morning, San Diego police reported a body was discovered inside Otay Valley Regional Park in Fenton Pond, and it appeared to be a Hispanic, teenage male.
Julian’s mother, Laura Guerrero Gomez, said she was the one who ultimately led authorities to her son.
Guerrero Gomez said a homeless man was seen riding Julian’s bike on Friday, and after she asked where he got it, he led her to the area where Julian’s body was recovered.
Guerrero Gomez said when she first reported Julian missing, she told police her son was autistic, had a mental disability, and was taking medication — factors that made him especially vulnerable.
Jose, Guerrero Gomez’s other son, translated for ABC 10News from Spanish to English, and said that his mother still has many questions.
“She wants to know why there was no urgency, and looking for him, there was no Amber Alert. There was no helicopter trying to look for him. She had to do everything herself.”
Guerrero Gomez also questioned how her son’s missing case was overall handled.
Jose said, “The officer who took the initial report is the same officer who showed up [at Fenton Pond]. She was begging the officer, and there was no help whatsoever. He didn’t want to go into the park. They didn’t want to question the person who had the bike.”
The family also has questions about how Julian ended up in the water.
“He doesn’t know that area, he doesn’t like water, and he doesn’t know how to swim,” Jose said.
Guerrero Gomez also added that when she found her son, he was naked in the pond.
“She definitely thinks that it wasn’t accidental that something somebody did to him,” Jose said. “She’s pretty much feeling destroyed at this point because we weren’t taken seriously from the beginning. Julian didn’t deserve all that.”
Jose said his mother wants justice and hopes another family who has a child with a disability doesn’t have to face the same experience with SDPD as she did.
Julian was positively identified by the Medical Examiner’s Office days after he was found dead.
ABC 10News reached out to The San Diego Police Department for explanations on how they handled Julian’s case.
A spokesperson told ABC 10News their hearts go out to Julian’s family in the following statement:
Our hearts go out to Julian’s family for their loss. We understand there may be questions about what led to his death. At this time, the case is not being treated as a homicide, so it is not under SDPD’s purview. It is being handled by the Medical Examiner’s Office. If their investigation shows indications of a crime, then SDPD’s Homicide Unit would take over responsibility for the investigation. Based on the information officers received at the time of the report, SDPD’s initial response was for a runaway juvenile. Officers were told where he normally frequents and began checking several locations; however, they were unable to locate him. A report was taken, and his name and picture were added to the log for missing juveniles. SDPD did additional follow-up with the family on the morning of May 15, prior to him being found in the Otay Valley Regional Park. The decision to identify the body was in the hands of the Medical Examiner’s Office that day. Any further questions about the investigation can be directed to them.
ABC 10News has requested an autopsy, investigative and toxicology report from the Medical Examiner’s office in Julian’s cause of death.
NWSL team San Diego Wave have poached Leeds United’s chief business officer Morrie Eisenberg to be its new chief executive officer.
Eisenberg, who joined Premier League club Leeds as chief operating officer in October 2023, is credited internally with leading the push on its stadium redevelopment at Elland Road, which gained full planning permission earlier this year.
During Eisenberg’s time at the club, Leeds secured promotion back to the Premier League and, after his promotion last May, avoided relegation this season to maintain their place in English football’s top flight.
Eisenberg will begin his new role at the Wave in August, having previously held leadership positions at LinkedIn, Tesla and with the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL. He remained as a senior advisor to 49ers Enterprises while working at Leeds, with the two teams sharing the same ownership.
An announcement will be made by the two teams later on Wednesday.
In a statement, San Diego Wave governor Lauren Leichtman welcomed Eisenberg as a “transformative leader.”
“His vision, collaborative leadership style and commitment to building world-class organizations make him the ideal person to lead this club into its next chapter,” she added.
Eisenberg said: “The Wave has already established itself as a global brand with an exceptional fan base, ambitious vision and strong foundation. I’m excited to work alongside the players, staff, supporters and community to continue building a club that sets the standard on and off the pitch.”
The Wave are third in the NWSL standings (Leonardo Fernandez / Getty Images)
Leeds United managing director Robbie Evans added: “While I am disappointed to see Morrie leave, I am grateful for his effort and impact over the last three years. Much as with players, when you employ excellent people who produce excellent results, sometimes the unfortunate effect is that they will attract interest elsewhere.
“Morrie and I first met three years ago in discussing if we should leave our old lives behind to try and help Leeds United return to its rightful place in English football. Three seasons later, he leaves with the club on an excellent trajectory. I hope Morrie is especially proud of his tireless work on the stadium expansion, which will benefit the club, supporters, and the community for generations to come.
“Morrie and his wonderful family depart with the best wishes of the club. He is welcome anytime if he tires of California sunshine and misses the Yorkshire weather!”
The Wave is building influence
Analysis by soccer writer Asli Pelit
Lauren Leichtman, the first woman to become a billionaire from private equity, bought the Wave from billionaire businessman Ron Burkle for a record $120 million in 2024. Less than three years earlier, Burkle bought the franchise for $2m. Leichtman’s arrival in the NWSL marked the entry of institutional-caliber capital from one of private equity’s most accomplished operators.
Through Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, which manages more than $12bn in assets, Leichtman brought a new level of financial sophistication to women’s soccer just as franchise valuations, sponsorship revenue and infrastructure spending across the NWSL continue to surge.
The acquisition also underscored the increasing importance of relationships in women’s soccer. Former Wave president and ex-USWNT coach Jill Ellis played a pivotal role in connecting the parties, leveraging a relationship with Leichtman that dates back two decades to UCLA. Though Ellis’ exit to join FIFA was quite contentious.
Bringing USWNT legend Alex Morgan into the ownership group only deepened the club’s alignment between business credibility and player influence, a growing trend across the NWSL’s new ownership era.
Having only launched in 2022, the Wave have never won the NWSL Championship, though they did capture the 2023 NWSL Shield after finishing with the league’s best regular-season record and added the 2024 Challenge Cup to the trophy case.
In just a few seasons, the Wave have packed stadiums, landed superstar talent, shattered franchise valuation records and behaved like an established giant; the only thing still missing is the championship confetti.
The Wave are navigating a transitional 2026 season, balancing strong results with clear growing pains both on and off the field. Under second-year head coach Jonas Eidevall, San Diego remains in the playoff run, consistently hovering around the league’s top four to six spots, but performances have often highlighted unresolved issues within the squad. The club is still searching for consistency, but the potential arrival of USWNT star Catarina Macario after the summer break could significantly raise the team’s ceiling and strengthen their chances of bringing home a trophy this season.
Eisenberg is coming to Wave after his stint with one of the most successful American ownership groups, the 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm linked to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, which completed a full takeover of the club in 2023 after first purchasing a minority stake five years earlier. Led by chairman Paraag Marathe and backed by the York family, the ownership group has reshaped Leeds with an American-style approach centered on commercial expansion, infrastructure investment and data-driven operations.
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