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Tyler Heaps is the 33-year-old sporting director and general manager for San Diego FC, Major League Soccer’s newest expansion team that launches in February. He’s worked for AS Monaco of the French league, U.S. Soccer in data analysis and the Right to Dream Academy in youth development.
He’s also the busiest man in America right now.
Last week he had 34½ hours to shift through a list of 360-odd unprotected players before the MLS Expansion Draft. Then came the start of MLS free agency. Then Stage 1 of the league’s Re-entry Process for other players. Stage 2 is Thursday. The SuperDraft for 477 eligible college players is Friday.
Oh, and he’s getting married next week to U.S. women’s national team star Lindsey Horan.
“I’ve been alright falling asleep, but then I’m wide awake at 2 a.m., thinking about my day,” Heaps said. “And I’m up against it with this wedding.”
His presence is required for the rehearsal dinner and the Saturday ceremony.
Honeymoon?
“Uh, no,” he said. “But we get each other’s lifestyle. Lindsey likes to watch football, so maybe she can watch (film) of some of our targets and help us.”
Heaps isn’t looking for two or three pieces to enhance a roster. He’s creating one.
It’s not a rebuild. It’s a build.
Publicly, SDFC has 13 players, or half its roster. Internally, Heaps said, they have 16 as three more contracts are finalized.
That leaves 10 more spots. The approximate source of those 10: another designated player, two or three more internationals from outside the league, two or three from Friday’s SuperDraft, two or three from trades and maybe one current MLS player from Stage 2 of the Re-entry process.
Striker, left wing, center back and goalie seem solid. Right wing, central midfielder and outside back are lighter.
“I’m happy where we’re at, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Heaps said. “We have a good balance between young players and players with more experience. But it’s not like just two guys moving to a new market. It’s 26 of them. That’s a lot of players who have to come in and settle into the club, and our job is to make that as smooth as possible.
“So it’s too early to tell, but we see a lot of positives.”
Here’s a closer look at the continuing evolution of SDFC’s inaugural roster.
Expansion draft
SDFC selected five unprotected players off existing rosters: midfielder Heine Gikling Bruseth from Orlando City, defender Hamady Diop from Charlotte FC and fullback/midfielder Jasper Löffelsend from the Colorado Rapids. It picked two other players that were immediately traded for allocation money in the MLS’s convoluted single-entity system.
It was who SDFC didn’t pick, though, that might have been the bigger news.
FC Dallas left right winger Paul Arriola unprotected, and Heaps admitted they were “pursuing” the 29-year-old from Chula Vista until literally minutes before the draft. He is a high-profile player with deep local ties — Arriola was in town this week dedicating a new park in Chula Vista — and plays a position of need.
But these decisions are never that simple. Arriola made $1.72 million in guaranteed compensation last season and has only one year left on his contract.
The talks in the hours and minutes before the expansion draft, then, centered on an extension. It was complicated by reports that the Seattle Sounders are trying to trade for Arriola.
“You need to get a lot of different agreements,” Heaps said. “You need to get an agreement from the prior club. You need to get an agreement from the player. You need to get an agreement from us, about what we think his valuation is. Yes, we had the opportunity to select him, but I think at his current number it didn’t make a ton of sense for us. We were trying to find a mutual agreement between all three parties and we just couldn’t come to it.
“You don’t want to bring a player and potentially only have him for a year and then have to find another solution.”
College draft
As an expansion team, SDFC gets the No. 1 overall pick in Friday’s SuperDraft. It also traded for Toronto FC’s first-round selection, No. 9 overall, in an expansion draft deal for the rights to NYCFC forward Thiago Andrade. Another trade netted the L.A. Galaxy’s second-round pick, meaning SDFC now has five selections in the three-round draft: 1, 9, 31, 56 and 61.
That would be quite the haul of impact talent in the NFL or NBA college drafts, but not so much in the soccer world.
Of the 29 first-round picks in last year’s SuperDraft, barely half played at all for their MLS clubs and none played more than half their club’s MLS minutes. The No. 1 overall selection, Trinidad and Tobago forward Tyrese Spicer from Lipscomb University, appeared in 19 games and scored two goals for a Toronto FC team that finished 11th in the 15-team Eastern Conference.
So who goes No. 1 this year?
Heaps said they’ve identified “our guy,” although they’re still listening to trade offers.
A logical choice, given their roster needs, might be Nigerian midfielder Michael Adedokun from Ohio State. He is the only person in Division I to hit double figures in goals (11) and assists (11), leading the Buckeyes to a 16-2-4 record, the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and a trip to the College Cup.
Heaps said they’re set at striker for now, which would seem to rule out Akron’s Emil Jaaskelainen, who scored a nation-leading 23 goals last season.
Another possibility might be Senegalese defender Pape Mar Boye, who was projected as the No. 1 pick last year before leaving Clemson to sign a pro contract with the USL’s Phoenix Rising, where he was a finalist for Young Player of the Year. He has another year left on his USL contract, meaning SDFC would likely need to pay a transfer fee to get him before 2026.
“If you look at it historically, very few SuperDraft picks made an impact in the first six to 12 months,” Heaps said. “Our expectation is to get two and potentially three players who will be on the first-team roster, but we don’t want to put too much emphasis on those players to come in and have success right away. For us, it’s about getting them in our environment and getting them up to speed, and hopefully we can get more and more of that impact later in Year 1 and especially in Year 2.”
Free agency
SDFC has one designated player, a big-splash signing that doesn’t count against the salary cap, in Mexican left winger Hirving “Chucky” Lozano. Heaps expects to sign another, with a center midfielder at the top of the wish list.
And in late October, the rumor mill began linking SDFC to Belgian midfield maestro Kevin De Bruyne, whose contract with Manchester City expires in June.
Heaps dumped a bucket of cold water on it.
“He would be a nice player to have,” Heaps said of the 33-year-old superstar who not long ago was rated among the best players on the planet, “but it’s still far-fetched at this moment. You can look up his salary, and it’s more than anyone makes in this league.”
De Bruyne reportedly makes $26.1 million per year, or $5 million more than Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi and $10 million more than the next guy on the MLS salary list, Toronto FC’s Lorenzo Insigne —and $18 million more than the league’s third-highest paid player, Inter Miami’s Sergio Busketts at $8.1 million.
More likely is a DP closer to the salary of the 29-year-old Lozano, which the Capology website estimates at $3.5 million per year but other reports say could be double that in MLS. His contract runs through 2028 with a club option for two additional years.
The clock is ticking, though. Players begin reporting Jan. 6, and the first official training session is Jan. 13 at the new complex being built on the Sycuan reservation.
Coaching staff
That much is finalized, with the club’s announcement Wednesday of who will join head coach Mikey Varas on the sideline.
His assistants are Frank Hjortebjerg from Denmark, Kelvin Jones from the Columbus Crew and Luciano Fusco from the San Jose Earthquakes. Jason Grubb from Austin FC is the goalkeeper coach. Jones and Grubb both have worked with U.S. youth national teams.
Schedule
SDFC knows its first two games: at reigning champion L.A. Galaxy on Feb. 22 or 23, and home against St. Louis SC on March 1. The remainder of the 34-game regular season schedule is expected to be announced Thursday.
SDFC will play the other 14 teams in its conference once at home and once away for 28 games. The other six games come from the Eastern Conference — three home, three away — meaning SDFC has a 20% chance of getting Messi and Inter Miami at Snapdragon Stadium.
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