Will MLS really stop at 30 clubs if Mohamed Mansour, the British-Egyptian billionaire and Conservative party treasurer, is willing to pay a $500m expansion fee for a club in San Diego?
A soccer commissioner, an Egyptian billionaire and a Native American tribal leader walk into a bar. Hmm, let’s try that again. OK, they walked onto a stage in San Diego on Thursday to plant a flag in Major League Soccer’s latest frontier: the city beat Las Vegas to become the 30th team in American soccer’s top division beginning in 2025, after this ownership group paid a record expansion fee of $500m for the privilege.
The aforementioned Egyptian, Mohamed Mansour – a dual British citizen who is the senior treasurer for the UK’s Conservative party – and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a local casino-operating tribe, partnering to launch a California-based football team sounds like something only Thomas Pynchon could conceive of, as clever people on Twitter have noted. It’s not the movie star and athlete-leaden ownership group of the NWSL’s Angel City FC in Los Angeles. But Mansour, who owns a global youth football development academy called Right to Dream, brings a unique proposition to the league. It was all feted at a splashy media event on Thursday at Snapdragon Stadium awash with local politicians, football supporters’ groups, business leaders and an astonishing number of suit-with-dress-sneakers ensembles.
