Don’t ever change, CVFC.
If you ever go pro (by joining the MLS; or even semi-pro by becoming a part of U.S. Soccer second division league USL) don’t change your name: Chula Vista Futbol Club. It’s simple, direct and tells me what you are.
Leave the weird, head scratching, too-clever, too-cute, too-not-boring names to the city north of you, you know, the home of the newly minted San Diego Loyal SC.
The Loyal, for anyone not familiar with soccer terminology and acronyms, is a soccer club (hence the SC after the name). In March their plan is to play in this country’s second tier of professional soccer because city of San Diego voters did not want to make land available to a developer who would have built a Major League soccer stadium.
But that’s another long, convoluted story left in the past.
The Loyal were (sort of) preempted by 1904 FC, another soccer/futbol club in San Diego that has hopes of being the county’s go-to outdoor soccer attraction.
1904 FC originally came about around three years ago as a way of bringing San Diego a professional team that would one day maybe play in the top tier MLS after first having played in the NASL, a second-division league.
The NASL has since dissolved and 1904 FC joined the newly formed NAISA, a third-division league, in playing their first batch of games this past September and October. At SDCCU stadium.
1904 FC, incidentally, got its name because someone pointed out the 19th and 4th letters of the alphabet are S and D respectively (San Diego, get it!?).
If Loyal SC has done one thing only in its early, early life it has wrestled away from 1904 FC the title of silliest name for a local sports team.
Nothing about Loyal suggests San Diego to me. Tourists don’t pay big money to come sample our loyalty. We don’t flock to a loyal when conditions are just right, or crave a fat, juicy loyal after a night on the town.
At least with a little wine or recreational cannabis and a lot of imaginative thought you could sort of see how 1904 represents San Diego.
Loyal SC’s motto, executives revealed, is “Loyal to the soil”. Which soil that is, however, is not abundantly clear.
Next spring the Loyal will play at USD’s Torero stadium in San Diego. The long range plan presumably is for The Loyal to find a place to build their own stadium and where that might be remains to be seen. (I failed to mention that 1904 FC, the team that was supposed to represent San Diego, was going to build a stadium and play their NASL games in Oceanside, a city closer to Orange County than San Ysidro in South San Diego, not to mention Chula Vista or National City before they came back to San Diego).
But regardless of the name I’ll be there to watch. A rose by any other name, after all…
But please, Chula Vista FC, if you ever make the jump to the Big Time, keep it simple. Not over complicating things is how you win.
