San Diego FC announced Tyler Heaps as the club’s inaugural sporting director on Thursday, marking the youngest person to hold the title in Major League Soccer.
FOX 5 sat down with the 33-year-old to talk about the position, what it means and his vision for the club heading into its debut season next year.
“I’m honored to be in the position,” Heaps said. “The pinnacle of this sport is being a sporting director.”
As sporting director, Heaps will oversee San Diego FC’s player recruitment and roster building strategy, according to the club.
“It was a bit of a shock,” Heaps said when he found out he was tapped for the role with the new team. “I’ve always had this feeling like I wanted to be it. I wanted to be part of a group that I feel comfortable and confident in. Honestly, the stars have aligned here.”
While on the younger end, the club said Heaps has more than a decade of top-level experience in soccer, including serving as the head of analysis for AS Monaco. He is also a known entity within the club, having joined its Right to Dream youth football academy back in September.
“Tyler’s as bright a sports executive as I’ve ever met, a brilliant football mind,” Tom Penn, CEO of San Diego FC, said in a news conference on Thursday.
At this stage, Heaps will need to put this football mind to the test by signing more than 25 players to join their anchor player, Chucky Lozano, on the roster.
“We’re still at a stage where we’re kind of looking at everything,” Heaps said. Obviously we have an idea where Chucky will play. We have an idea now that we’ve signed a center back, we’ve signed a six, so we kind of have a core spine that we’re starting to form. Obviously, we need to find now those other types of players.”
Heaps will also be involved in searching for San Diego FC’s first head coach.
“You’ll see an announcement in the coming weeks for a head coach,” said Heaps. “We’ve went through an extensive process, we talked to many, many people. We spent hours on a phone call with a number of different coaches from all different backgrounds.
Outside San Diego FC, Heaps will be busy towards the end of the year: He’s getting married to the Olympic Gold Medalist and captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team Lindsey Horan less than two weeks before MLS players report to camp before the season starts in February.
“She’ll probably kill me because I’m not paying too much attention to the wedding planning, allowing her to do that,” Heaps said, “We have a squad to build and we have to be successful here in San Diego.”