SAN DIEGO -- San Diego FC has hired Tyler Heaps as the club's first sporting director and general manager, the MLS expansion franchise announced Thursday.
Heaps said he appreciated the move and looked forward to the opportunity.
“I'm ecstatic to be in this position, to have this opportunity and I want to just say that thank you to you guys (SDFC Ownership) for your trust in me and seeing what I can bring to this fantastic organization,” Heaps said. “Yeah, it's a proud moment for me to sit up here.
“And it's my job to make sure that we have that winning culture, and we develop that winning culture. ... We are an expansion side, but we have every intent to be successful and to do it from year one.”
Heaps, 33, became the youngest sporting director in Major League Soccer, carrying more than a decade of top-level worldwide football experience with football roles at Right to Dream, AS Monaco and the U.S. Soccer Federation.
The decade-plus of experience involves six years at the U.S Soccer Federation as the head of analysis (2016-2019) and director of sporting analytics (2019-2021). From 2021-2023 he took on the role of head of analysis and insights at AS Monaco. This past year he served as group head of recruitment and insights for Rights to Dream, helping both FC Nordsjælland and SDFC.
Heaps and the club expressed the importance of aligning their vision and values with the Right to Dream Academy, an international soccer organization that focuses on the development of talent and character development.
With San Diego FC joining the Right to Dream family alongside FC Tut and FC Nordsjælland, the club saw Heaps as the top candidate for those collaborations and shared visions with the organization with his previous roles within Rights to Dream and FC Nordsjælland.
“We need our leadership to be right to dreamy and to understand what that really means and be committed to it when the pressure's on because we're building the greatest academy,” Penn said. “It's Tyler to guide and make sure that we give those kids that opportunity in the long haul and the short haul, we win. We're going to do both.”
With the title of sporting director continuing to grow in importance around the sport, Heaps shared his opinion on those new responsibilities.
“From my standpoint yeah it is a big job,” he said. “You oversee all football operations from a squad build to the staffing, etc. and we're doing it from scratch so there's going to be some peaks and troughs, but it's also an exciting opportunity.
"From our standpoint, it's about finding the right people and the right players that want to be a part of it.”