Main League Soccer’s newest growth group San Diego FC is ready to call AS Monaco‘s director of soccer Carlos Aviña the membership’s first sporting director, sources confirmed to ESPN.
The appointment of Aviña, a local of Mexico, is imminent with an announcement anticipated quickly, sources mentioned.
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The information of Aviña’s potential appointment was first reported by Fabrizio Romano.
San Diego was awarded an MLS growth group in Could 2023, with the group to start play because the league’s thirtieth membership in 2025.
San Diego FC CEO Tom Penn hinted on the arrival of key entrance workplace employees in February, telling ESPN: “We’ll rent a sporting director first, coach could be after that, I would say probably someday in Q2 [of 2024] you’d hear extra.”
The brand new face of San Diego will arrive with loads of expertise, working as Membership America’s head of sports activities intelligence from 2017 to 2019 earlier than being promoted to director of soccer growth and participant recruitment. He then joined Membership Brugge in 2021, serving as sporting director.
Aviña has been with Monaco for the previous 10 months, serving to the group to 3rd within the Ligue 1 desk with 49 factors from 27 video games and a 14W-6L-7D.
Now, with San Diego, he shall be tasked with constructing the group from scratch.
The group has made simply three participant signings forward of their MLS debut, bringing on U.S. youth nationwide group goalkeeper Duran Ferree and worldwide arrivals Jeppe Tverskov and Marcus Ingvartsen.
Regardless of the membership’s location, Penn has mentioned that he is not solely centered on making the primary main signing a high-profile Mexican star.
“We do not have that particular type of purpose, no,” he instructed ESPN in October 2023. “We wish to discover foundational gamers which are gonna be with us for the childhood of a membership. We’re gonna work with the important thing leaders in soccer operations that shall be recognized to make these key selections.”
Data from ESPN’s Cesar Hernandez contributed to this report.