Johnny Phillips: Tom Vernon hopes to unearth the future stars in stripes
The announcement of a new expansion club in Major Soccer League, to be based in the Californian city of San Diego, raises some intriguing possibilities for how player development should be structured.
The league’s 30th club will begin playing in 2025 at Snapdragon Stadium, a 35,000-seat venue that has already proven to be a popular destination for football fans in the region.
Las Vegas was another front-runner with a bid of its own, but MLS Commissioner Don Garber was impressed by the consortium representing San Diego.
San Diego’s MLS club will be owned by Mohamed Mansour, a British-Egyptian investor, and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a Native American tribe, led by Chairman Cody Martinez. Key to the deal was the Right To Dream (RTD) academy run by English coach Tom Vernon and owned by Mansour’s Man Capital group.
What Garber and the MLS organisers want is for RTD to develop young players in an area of the country where talent is being lost, with the ultimate goal being a more successful USA national team.
RTD was founded by Vernon in 1999, as an academy for under-privileged children, including some who had been living rough on the streets, in Ghana. Many graduates now progress to careers in US football and the Ghanaian national team. Vernon took his RTD academy model to Europe in 2015 with Danish Superliga club FC Nordsjaelland, who currently sit second in the table with the youngest top division side in world football.
Earlier this week I caught up with Vernon, who has now moved back to the UK, to talk about the ambitious plans in the United States.
