The history of soccer in San Francisco goes back to the late 1800s, San Francisco City FC is an exciting addition to that heritage and in a way, breaks from tradition, to do things their own way. We reached out to the fan-owned club to get the scoop on the Iron & gold and were spoiled in the depth of their response…

SF City currently plays in the USL League 2, but that wasn't always the case; when were you founded and why? What league did you begin with?
The club was founded in 2001 to play in the San Francisco Soccer Football League. In 2014, a group of local soccer fans got together to discuss supporter-ownership. One of those fans had played for SF City FC and so we approached the club’s founders about the possibility of converting the club into a supporter-owned one.
Initially, we attempted to play in the NPSL but our entrance was blocked by other local clubs. While we were eventually vindicated by an arbitrator, we had already entered the NorCal Premier League and after that, moved to USL2 (then the PDL).

The roots of the SFSFL go back over a century, to the founding of clubs like Vampires, Vikings, Barbarians, and the Olympic Club; did having ties to an organization with such a rich heritage resonate with coaches, players, and supporters? When you outgrew the league, was it a hard choice to seek a broader level of competition?
Our members and players all love being part of the long history of SF soccer. But we wouldn’t say we “outgrew” the league. We still put out a side in the SFSFL and try to stay involved in the community around it. In a better US soccer ecosystem, we would have been promoted out of it, rather than just entering another league.
It wasn’t a hard choice in the sense of requiring a lot of emotional energy; our club has national ambitions and we couldn’t meet those in a local league. It was hard in the sense that we had to make sure we were ready to make the leap while guarding our club’s identity and mission. We don’t intend to ever abandon our ties to the SFSFL and we hope to strengthen them as we all build an open soccer system.

Had the road to the NPSL not been blocked, do you suppose you'd still be there or where you always destined to join USL? As the club and its membership continues to grow, do you see the organization considering joining Oakland Roots in NISA or staying within the structure of USL and moving up the leagues?
While we talk about the future a lot internally, we know better than to make predictions about what the soccer landscape is going to look like in the future. Since you posed this question to us, there’s been some news about the Roots and their affiliation with NISA. The only safe prediction we’ve ever made is that Alexi Lalas will continue to have bad takes on Twitter. We constantly evaluate where we are and look at new information as we get it, but the only honest answer is that we have an internal process with our membership paramount in that decision.

We’d certainly consider NISA but we like our relationship with USL. Where we go in the future depends on too many variables to make any definite predictions or statements. There are also certain non-negotiables for us, especially around supporter-control and ownership and independence of our supporters, and we always have to be satisfied that the league we play in will at a minimum respect those structures, if not actively support them. We also are very mindful of our players’ preferences, and while our methodology isn’t very scientific, we’ve seen a clear preference for USL2 to NPSL among our players.

For us, maintaining our club identity is more important than the particular league we play in. The fact that we even have to discuss rival leagues is a consequence of a deeply flawed system. One of the reasons we wanted to have a supporter-owned club was so that we would not be at the mercy of leagues or investors. If we went broke tomorrow and USL2 ceased to exist and hell froze over and Alexi became smarter, we’d still have our club and if we go back to playing local teams on a park pitch with no stands, there will still be Northsiders out there banging a drum and singing.

We also really value organic, sustainable growth. Of our internal metrics, in many ways the one we consider the most important is renewal rate. We want to grow into a well-supported pro team, but we’re not assuming that the day we go pro is the day that our attendance triples. We want to build a culture and a community and if that means moving more slowly, then fine.

SFCFC was founded in 2001, but has it always been a membership organization? When was the San Francisco Football Supporters Association started and how instrumental have they been in growing the club to what it is today? Is membership only for locals or can anybody join?
When the club was founded, it wasn’t a membership club in the sense that we use that term now. It was a soccer club that three people put together so they could play in the SFSFL. The current iteration of the club is not just the story about that original club, but a few different strands of soccer culture in the Bay Area.

The San Francisco Football Supporters Association was started in 2012 by a group of local fans to promote the idea of a club for the City and to help build it. They also wanted to make sure that any club that played for San Francisco would live up to the values of the City and would serve the community through the game. The working group that would help found SF City had several SFFSA members in it, and right from the beginning they would form the core group of volunteers and supporters filling key positions in the club itself, and several of them still serve within the team today. There were also investors who were interested in supporting the dream of a supporter-owned club, as well as people who had not been involved in the SFFSA but were active in the soccer community, either through a local supporter group for an EPL or La Liga or through coaching youth sides.

For the second part of your question: anyone can join as a member. We actually offer a discounted membership to people who live outside the Bay Area, because we found that a lot of people want to support independent, supporter-owned soccer, but aren’t going to be able to come to matches or take advantage of our social events, and we wanted to give them a fairly priced way to support us. If you’re interested in supporting grassroots football, join up!

SFC FC take on local rivals SF Glens in USL League 2 competition.

The 2026 World Cup has "Bay Area" listed as a potential host site. While there may not be a stadium in the City fit for an actual match, there's talk of one or more of the pitches being upgraded for training grounds for visiting national teams - is there any truth behind that and would your organization pursue involvement if it meant you would have access to those upgraded facilities in a post-world cup world?
That is a long time away. I don’t think anyone, including the higher echelons of FIFA, CONCACAF, or USSF would even be able to answer that question. I’m not sure what you mean by “involvement.” Certainly we’ll have programming around the World Cup. During the last one, we partnered with the Japan Society to throw watch parties for the Japanese National Team, for example, and we’d love to get our players and members exposure to international sides, but we’ll take this all as it comes.

Unfortunately 2020 didn't allow us to really enjoy our soccer as usual - what will success look like for the Iron and Gold in 2021? What do we have to look forward to?
At this point, getting on the field would be a win for 2021. But we don’t anticipate that there will be significant long-term consequences for us to have lost this year. We always want to build on our momentum year-to-year, and we’re always learning from our mistakes each season, but ultimately, our club’s connection to its membership is strong enough to weather this. When we take the pitch again, there will be Northsiders making noise, top collegiate players putting in work, and good local food and beer in the stands.

Roll Fog… SFCFC enjoy solid support from the Northsiders the stands.