MLS surprise San Diego FC comes to Allianz Field with a Minnesotan helping point the way

San Diego FC sporting director Tyler Heaps has made it, truly made it.

And we’re not talking about anything to do with his work putting expansion SDFC, which visits Minnesota United on Saturday evening, into second place in the standings.

Heaps, who grew up in East St. Paul, is living the dream that every Minnesotan has had at least once during the dark days of January: First, he moved to Monaco and its perfect Mediterranean weather, and then moved on to the year-round summer in San Diego.

“You could have never [told] me, when I was in East St. Paul playing at Conway Rec Center, that I’d end up here,” Heaps said. “But here we are.”

Heaps, 34, the youngest sporting director in MLS, has a classic Minnesota soccer biography. He is still close with Eric Miller and Brent Kallman, the Woodbury natives and former Loons players with whom he used to carpool to club soccer practice.

He graduated from DeLaSalle and then Augsburg University, playing soccer at both places. After high school, he stayed in coaching — at the club level and at St. Catherine — and played for the MNUFC reserves, back in the pre-MLS days, while also getting into finance.

Heaps can rival anyone for Minnesota sports fandom; he says he’s a “suffering MN sports fan” right in his social media biography, just like about a hundred other people you probably know. His mom used to deliver the Star Tribune, and the first thing he and his four siblings would do in the morning was get to the sports section to see how the Timberwolves (or whoever) did the night before.

“When we were growing up, the way we got new soccer shoes was we would go on paper routes,” he said.

His mom also would work in the Metrodome concession stands and take the kids with her, meaning Heaps has pretty much a complete set of Twins bobbleheads from his childhood.

If you’re in the market for, say, a Lew Ford bobblehead, he can hook you up.

His Minnesota soccer attendance credentials are similarly unimpeachable: He was at the Loons’ inaugural home game in MLS, but he goes back even further than that.

“Some of my earliest memories are watching [former Minnesota Thunder goalkeeper] Joe Warren against Landon Donovan at Central High School,” Heaps said, referring to the 2004 U.S. Open Cup quarterfinals, when the Thunder lost on penalties to Donovan’s San Jose Earthquakes.

In 2016, though, his path diverged from the typical Minnesotan, when he left finance to take a job as an analyst with the U.S. Soccer Federation. It was the early days of soccer’s data revolution, and he rose to become the head of analytics for the federation, basically by working with whoever needed help — first with the sales department, then increasingly with the coaches.

Eventually, he was traveling with both the men’s and women’s national teams, even filling in as a player during women’s national team training — which is how he met his wife, Lindsey Heaps, who’s now the captain of the women’s national team.

Not too shabby, for an East St. Paul kid, to have your wedding covered by People magazine.

Formerly Lindsey Horan, now Heaps after their wedding last December, she was just at Allianz Field, playing with the United States — and will be back this weekend, this time in San Diego colors.

 “I’ll have 25 family and friends there,” Tyler Heaps said. “I think I’ve taken our whole away ticket allotment there. My mom will be there. I’ve got 10 nieces and nephews that will be there in San Diego gear.”

From the national team, he moved to AS Monaco as their head of analytics. After three seasons there, he moved on to work for Right to Dream. Originally a soccer academy in Ghana, it grew and was taken over by the Mansour Group, an Egyptian conglomerate which then took a novel approach: buying up pro clubs so that their academy players would have a place to play.

The group now includes three professional teams: Egyptian women’s team FC Masar; FC Nordsjælland in Denmark; and starting this year, San Diego, the newest team in MLS.

A huge part of the Right to Dream philosophy is being committed to a style of play that will work for a team that’s going to play teenagers against veterans. That means trying to keep the ball in play, avoiding duels and set pieces — something that can work for a team that might find itself often at a physical disadvantage.

It gave San Diego the rare distinction of being an MLS club whose identity, all the way down to its on-field style, had been formed before the actual founding of the team itself.

“I think that is the secret sauce, is the culture and the style that we are totally integrated to,” Heaps said. “It’s not a secret. Everybody can watch us, and they all know exactly how we’re going to play.”

The group has big plans for San Diego. It is reportedly spending $150 million to build an academy there. It can recruit players from both sides of the border, and Right To Dream’s founder, Tom Vernon, is unabashed that he wants the team to eventually be 90% players from the San Diego area.

“We preached a lot of stuff before we went out and played,” Heaps said. “We’re going to play young players — we’re starting teenagers at the moment. We’re going to play and take risks. We’re playing balls in our own box every week, and more and more as we get more comfortable and confident.

“That’s probably what I’m most proud of. What we’ve built here is what we said we were going to do a lot, in those first six months before we had any players and any staff, and we’ve kind of showed that we’re at least going to stay committed to it.”

It’s an idealistic version of soccer. It has made San Diego, just halfway into its first year in the league, a cult favorite for neutral fans who prize watchability above all else. And the Right To Dream name is probably fitting, for the team’s sporting director, whose career has taken him all the way from St. Paul to San Diego — via the French Riviera.

7:30 p.m., Saturday at Allianz Field

TV; radio: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV; 1500 AM

San Diego FC (9-5-3) has made a flying start to their expansion season in MLS, playing attractive soccer and climbing to second in the Western Conference. SDFC, though, will be missing midfielders Luca de la Torre and Aníbal Godoy at the Gold Cup, and star winger Hirving “Chucky” Lozano to injury — meaning that for once Minnesota won’t have the worst of it when it comes to June absences. Minnesota (8-3-6) is tied with San Diego on points, and has four starters — Dayne St. Clair, Carlos Harvey, Joseph Rosales, and Tani Oluwaseyi — at the Gold Cup.