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New pro soccer team to build stadium in ...

San Diego’s NASL expansion frachise picks 1904 FC as its name, but maybe not why you think.

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The area’s newest professional soccer team held its introductory press conference Wednesday morning at a harborside restaurant with sweeping views of downtown San Diego and sweeping visions of “being here for the long term.”

The biggest news, though, was about a site 40 miles north, on an old sand mine in inland Oceanside.

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After considering several potential sites for a $15 million, 10,000-seat stadium it hopes to open in 2019 for its second season, San Diego 1904 FC and principal owner Demba Ba — a Senegalese forward who has played for some of the biggest clubs in Europe — chose to partner with the 22-field SoCal Sports Complex on the El Corazon property five miles east of downtown Oceanside.

“We started by looking at the county as a whole,” said 1904 FC president Bob Watkins, a local businessman who attended Crawford High and San Diego State. “We started out in Imperial Beach and Chula Vista and the Olympic Training Center. We moved up to Balboa Stadium, and we decided with all that was going on with SoccerCity we needed to go beyond that.

“We went to Del Mar, and while that was nice, it was a bit crowded and not much of an opportunity to build something. We went over to Poway. Then we went up to Escondido … Then we were introduced to the Oceanside area, and there already was a soccer facility that has the specific attributes important to us.”

Youth soccer players and their parents know it well, having participated in massive summer tournaments there. The stadium will be adjacent to the parking lot at the front of the complex, where it has erected temporary grandstands in the past to host international youth tournaments.

It will be a modular structure, cheaper and more portable than traditional stadiums because it is manufactured elsewhere in Southern California and transported to Oceanside in pieces for assembly, like Lego blocks. A rendering shows pillars meant to represent the Oceanside pier and aqua blue coverings between them that represent the ocean. The canopy above, then, is white-capped waves.

The backside of the stadium will provide permanent restrooms and concession stands for the expanse of soccer fields, which currently rely on Porta-Potties and food trucks.

The design and planning are handled by two companies: Populous, also contracted by SDSU for its proposed football stadium in Mission Valley; and GL Events, a European firm responsible for many of the temporary venues at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Watkins expects construction to begin in September 2018 and take four months.

That’s plenty of time for the 2019 season but means 1904 FC needs to find a home for the second half of 2018. Currently it has booked USD’s 6,000-seat Torero Stadium for March through July, but USD has the scheduling congestion of two college soccer teams and a football team on most weekends from mid-August on. The university, Watkins said, is examining the feasibility of adding a fourth tenant through the conclusion of the North American Soccer League season in early November.

Assuming, that is, the NASL still exists in 2018.

U.S. Soccer, the sport’s national governing body, recently denied the NASL’s application to retain its provisional second-division status, prompting the league to file a federal antitrust lawsuit protesting the federation’s authority to regulate pro soccer while alleging collusion with Major League Soccer.

The lawsuit itself could take years to litigate. Perhaps more vital to the league’s immediate future is an Oct. 31 hearing in New York for a preliminary injunction temporarily restoring its second-division status. The league’s viability, by its own admission, is at risk if it’s denied.

“The commitment of the NASL teams and owners that will compete in the 2018 season,” the lawsuit says, “is dependent on the NASL maintaining at least its Division II status … so that the NASL can maintain its credibility with its fans, sponsors, players and broadcasters.”

Watkins seemed more optimistic, no matter the outcome of the Halloween hearing.

“We’re not concerned about next season,” Watkins said. “We’ll be playing soccer … (The NASL) will exist. The division status will be determined by the courts. We’ve been working very, very hard bringing in other cities to the league.”

In the meantime, the club will press forward with hiring a coach and signing players. Alexandre Gontran, Ba’s longtime agent from France and a former coach himself, was introduced Wednesday as the general manager and head of soccer operations.

Gontran hopes to name a head coach — “probably European,” he said — in the coming weeks and hold player tryouts in mid-December and early January. The NASL allows seven foreigners per roster, and Gontran indicated they will seek a veteran, big-name presence from the highest levels of European soccer to help mentor younger players — many of which will be American prospects.

How big of a name?

“Some we are considering have played in the Premier League (of England) or La Liga (of Spain),” Gontran said.

Less of a mystery is the team’s style of play. Ba, who currently plays in China, and fellow investors Eden Hazard (Chelsea), Yohan Cabaye (Crystal Palace) and Moussa Sow (Fenerbahce) are all attacking players with a thirst for scoring. Park the bus in front of the goal, they won’t.

“We know how we want to play,” Gontran said. “It’s an offensive style. We are not afraid to take some goals, but we have to score one more than the opponent. That is the first rule of soccer.”

Watkins said they hope to average crowds of “3,500 to 5,000” at Torero Stadium and “5,000 to 7,500” once they move into their permanent home in Oceanside. Beyond that, Ba and his partners steered clear of rash promises Wednesday.

“It’s going to take time because we’re starting from scratch,” Ba said. “We’re starting from zero. In order to be good in 15 or 20 years, we must set the pace slowly and make sure we’re keeping our vision on the same path. I’m not going to say we’re going to be in the playoffs of the NASL in the first year or we’re going to win the cup in three years.

“It’s not a lack of ambition. It’s just being realistic. We’re going to do things right. We’re going to do things step by step.”

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mark.zeigler@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutzeigler

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