SF City FC Fans on the Local and Global Forces Tarnishing the Beautiful Game

Every four years, you’re bound to hear left-leaning soccer fans in the US — their football fandom partly the result of watching the workers of the (rest of the) world unite, at least on sport — try to square their love of the game with the world historic social, political, and economic wrongdoings of the World Cup. But with the US hosting a number of games together with Canada and Mexico, including at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, and the despicable treatment of fans, teams, and referees by US border patrol, previous critiques of the largest sporting event in the world and FIFA, the organization that puts it on, felt less close to home.

But SF City FC fans don’t have those complicated feelings when it comes to supporting their favorite team. “We align with a more community-organized, community-rooted sport,” says Isaiah Cornejo, a San Francisco-born and raised SF City fan. “Essentially we're frustrated by FIFA for charging thousands of dollars to watch the matches and also just the corruption. You know their ties with president Donald Trump, all of those things. It's just not what we align with. We're here to offer the people of San Francisco $8-12 to come watch a game instead of paying $500-2000.”

Part of the amateur/pre-professional USL-2 League, most SF City players are college-aged athletes playing in their off season. For comparison, the Oakland Roots play in the USL-Championship, the second tier of professional soccer below Major League Soccer (MLS). Tickets to games are cheap, and the team’s home matches are usually at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park — original home of the San Francisco 49ers — making it easy for everyone from the soccer curious to diehard ultras to watch high-quality gameplay from athletes who may go on to play in professional leagues in the US or overseas.

That’s how Cornejo became a fan. “I was really just looking for a local club to go out with my friends and watch soccer. And then I went to one match and saw the community and how tight everyone was, and I just really wanted to get in there. It's nice to have a team within the city that I can come out on the weekends, weekdays and support a team, not having to drive or watch it on the TV,” said Cornejo.  

That’s also why he founded the Kezar Union, a SF City supporter group that focuses on bringing high school and college aged students out to matches. Kezar Union joined two previous supporter groups — the Northsiders, City’s oldest supporter group founded 2015 on anti-fascist principles, and the Fault Line Offenders, a group of fans linked to the antiracist skinhead scene who started watching overseas soccer leagues at Kezar Pub across from the stadium and wanted to transfer their love of the sport into real life, local rabble-rousing. This season, all three came together under a single banner, La Bahia de Frisco.

City fans and players even wear their love of San Francisco on their sleeve. Since 2023, the team has maintained an in-kind sponsorship with San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA): their jerseys promote MUNI and MUNI ads promote the team. According to Aaron Mansfield, President of the Members Organization, the partnership was a bit of a “Hail Mary” from team Creative Director Ian Blackley after the team “almost went broke” during COVID. “It worked. I think the first initial run of jerseys sold out in less than 24 hours.”

At the cross town derby at San Francisco State’s Cox Stadium on June 7, it was clear that the fierro y oro (iron and gold) fans of SF City greatly outnumbered their green and white clad Treasure Island-based counterparts. Waving flags, taunting the opposite side’s players, singing chants, and setting off flares, even casual City fans bring a genuine enthusiasm to supporting their team that is hard to outmatch. And it’s not just because SF City FC, as of this writing, is undefeated, with only 1 draw out of 10 games as of this writing. 

With a classic public sponsor, SF City Fans have relished in supporting a team practically unscathed by the nefarious corporate meddling all too prevalent in the World Cup and pro-sports more broadly; that is, until Mayor Lurie and a new team, Golden City FC, threatened to kick them out of Kezar, their home of 11 years. 

Will the MUNI Jerseys Ride to Kezar?

In May 2025, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that a new team, Golden City FC (GCFC), would take over Kezar Stadium. In an Instagram reel, Lurie declared that “the new GCFC team will bring new life to Kezar Stadium and the neighborhoods around it, and investments in the stadium will benefit the whole community.” 

Shortly after the Mayor’s announcement, he co-sponsored legislation with Supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Myrna Melgar, to allow the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department to enter a 15-year permit with GCFC, with the possibility of three five-year extensions. With this public-private partnership, the team and MLS Next PRO — think the MLS minor leagues with corporate greed replacing the charm of the baseball equivalent — promised to invest $10 million into the stadium. One month later, in June 2025, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the plan — leaving SF City FC scrambling to secure a few home games at Kezar this season. 

Despite the Mayor’s hamfisted fanfare, Golden City FC has made little progress on its $10 million promise to upgrade Kezar’s seats, press box, field, and more. While the team does already boast a Wikipedia page — complete with “History” subsection featuring Lurie’s photo prominently — its official website only lists email addresses for questions, community engagement, and investor relations. Though GCFC initially planned to begin playing in 2026, the renovations have not yet broken ground, and they likely won’t play until 2027.

“I don't think you can build live soccer in SF by kicking a team out of their home."

Though there is a chance Golden City’s season won’t overlap with City’s, thus allowing the latter to play, Lurie’s claim that a new team would bring new life to Kezar seemed tone-deaf to SF City FC supporters. “Kezar is our home. That is where we play, and all the chants have Kezar in them,” said Atticus Becker, a teenager who has supported City with his father Jeremy since he was 4 years old,  about the possibility of SF City losing its home of 11 years. 

“It's a poor play. This club if nothing else is a great PR move for anybody. We're community based, we're very oriented towards giving back. And putting on a good show,” added Jeremy. 

As reported by The San Francisco Standard, one of the co-owners of GCFC, Geoff Oltmans, is in private equity and made considerable donations to Lurie’s Tipping Point non-profit, which may be a conflict of interest for the mayor. Together with John York, owner of the 49ers, Lurie also has investments in the Leeds United soccer team. 

Neither the Mayor’s Office nor Golden City FC responded to Current’s request for comment.

Many SF City fans plan to boycott the new team. “I super love live sports and I was initially really excited about it because for me that's just more soccer in SF. But when I heard they were trying to push City out of the stadium I got pretty mad,” said Brian Manhoe, another City fan. You’ll see and hear him at home games beating a drum to rally the crowd. “I don't think you can build live soccer in SF by kicking a team out of their home. You know I am not going to go to any of their games."

For fans, it also seems like Golden City’s backers want casual spectators to confuse the two. “[Their] color [Gold and Grey] is very similar to ours [Gold and Black],” said Rory Masio, a member of the Northsiders crew, recalling fans’ initial response to the announcement. “It was just like, are you trying to rip off our shit now?” 

The contrast between community- based SF City FC and capitalist-backed GCFC is almost comical, but the relationship between SF City FC and its fans goes beyond how it taps into community and public services like MUNI. Isaiah, Rory, Brian and 600 others are not just fans, but shareholding owners of the club.

Community-Owned Team Supports Community Values

Founded in 2001, SF City FC has been community owned since 2014, making it the oldest community owned soccer club in the United States. Similar to the model of the German Bundesliga or the Green Bay Packers NFL team, member-ownership means that fans own 50% + 1 share of the club, with private investors making up the other ~49%. “Every other club and sports team in the country, most of the world, is owned by singular people, by billionaires, by private equity,” said Mansfield. Members are also eligible to run for the board — as Cornejo did ahead of this season. 

As a fan-owned organization, SF City FC has put considerable work into positioning itself as the team repping the 7x7. “Big shout out, it’s Pride Month. Queerlife Space is a queer therapy collective that sponsors them. So honestly they are supporting home, the queers, everybody in between, so I really think this is a safe space to come out to,” explained Kayla Fried-Lee, on why she comes to SF City games. Queerlife Space and the La Bahia de Frisco supporter group are holding a pride fundraiser. 

“I love it when the public library is out here. Just getting people out to read,” Fried-Lee added. This season, the team partnered with the San Francisco Public Library, bringing librarians and the SFPL’s stands and bookmobile to some of its home matches, like the June 7 derby against the Glens. 

Another draw for fans is Foggy, SF City FC’s non-binary, perpetually zooted mascot — think Karl the Fog meets South Park’s Towlie. Foggy emerged last year out of a fan’s drawings and is now a regular feature of SF City games. “We love Foggy,” explained Mansfield. “Foggy is gender fluid. Foggy is everyone. Foggy is the old, young, athletic, the non athletic. Fluid on every level, literally and figuratively fluid on every level.”

For Daniel Díaz,  a Colombian filmmaker who grew up in London making a documentary about SF City FC, all of these elements come together to make SF City FC truly unique. “It’s a bit of a salve to what I see as the issues with US sports, which feel a lot more corporate, a lot more impersonal., a lot more removed from the community and from the people who make the clubs, make the teams, make the sport what they are.” Díaz became a member of SF City FC even before he officially relocated to San Francisco.

An Alternative Model to FIFA’s Sportswashing US Fascism

According to Masio, members have a real say — including in this year’s decision concerning the World Cup. “We have our annual general meeting and you get a vote on basically whatever the club is…For example, this year, how we were gonna manage around the World Cup. How involved should we be with it?”

Unlike other local clubs, SF City FC is not hosting watch parties or events affiliated with FIFA. The goal, according to Mansfield, wasn’t to oppose the World Cup, but to promote “this alternative model of sport.” “While all these eyes are on the World Cup, there's going to be a lot of voices who are talking about all the things that are wrong with FIFA, and we totally agree with that….[But] what we can provide as a club on the soccer side is really more ‘Hey, this is how we do things differently.’ Not everything has to be corporate owned. This is a real possibility that could exist in the United States, not just something that happens overseas — and draw that contrast with the World Cup.”

Jeremy and Atticus Becker welcome the club’s decision. “It's obvious that that level of soccer...it would be great if it was just pure and beautiful soccer. But it’s not. It's tainted with money, with power, with wrong intentions. I'm fully supportive of our stance to not really make a big deal out of it,” said Jeremy. 

“You can't host if you're not going to be fair to all the teams,” added Atticus. 

In 2022, the club also declined to support the tournament in Qatar, citing the “more than six thousand migrant workers [that] have died in slave labor conditions” and the country’s hostility to the LGBTQ+ community. More recently, in January 2026, the club issued a statement against ICE. 

While the club has not issued an official statement on the 2026 World Cup, some fans have donned SF City FC jerseys and scarves to protest. On June 13, a small group of fans accompanied members of the Black Alliance for Peace, Vigil4Gaza, San Jose Against War, and the Anti-Fascist Football Coalition outside Levi’s Stadium’s opening match between Switzerland and Qatar in Santa Clara to call on attendees to boycott the games.

“We're deeply invested in the politics of this movement. So seeing FIFA and the US use the sport we love as a way to cover up for crimes and genocide is deeply affecting to us,” said one SF City FC fan who declined to give their name but said they were part of La Bahia de Frisco while holding a sign reading “Boycott US World Cup” with other local soccer fans. 

Díaz, who accompanied the protestors out of personal conviction and for his documentary, told Current in an earlier interview that FIFA’s sportswashing of the Trump administration’s fascist policies was too much to ignore. “The list is continuing to grow in terms of the abhorrent treatment of World Cup participants, be they referees, fans, teams [by] the US. FIFA is very clearly and openly complicit in the US's treatment of these individuals. That was made abundantly clear with the presentation of this bogus Mickey Mouse Nobel Peace Prize alternative to appease Trump and co-sign sportswashing the violence, the hostility and aggressions that he continues to perpetuate against, well, everyone.”

But business and political interests are threatening SF City FC and the stadium they call home all the same. 

Kezar ‘til Colma?

Though GCFC may allow SF City FC to play some games at Kezar, the move by the Mayor and Board of Supervisors is difficult to interpret as anything more than a top-down co-optation of all the work — the MUNI and SFPL partnerships, pride fundraisers, local djs spinning at home games, beers by SF brewery Standard Deviant — that SF City FC has put into activating local soccer fans by being connected to local community.

However, SF City fans have grown a bit concerned with the SF City board’s relationship with Golden City FC. "Occasionally, one of the owners will come to one of our games,” said Masio. “He's kind of like a bad luck charm in a way, because, that game that you came to Wednesday, we drew against Marin. Fucking hate Marin.” Marco Rohrer, the other co-owner of Golden City FC, made an appearance at the May 27 match against Marin, which Current also attended, and was seen talking to fans and board members. 

“Over the course of a year of filming, I know that [Rohrer] has been to at least two games, including the match against Marin,” said Díaz. “I introduced myself and asked him for an interview for the documentary. He declined to be filmed, but, just like a politician, he offered to discuss GCFC over beers at Kezar Pub. Strictly off camera.”

The SF CITY FC Board has told fans and Current that they would release a video addressing fan concerns about its conversation with Rohrer and other representatives of Golden City that has yet to be published. 

Mansfield represents City’s 50%+1 member-shareholders, but he also recognizes that the team as an organization is caught between a rock and the hard reality of San Francisco city government’s moneyed interests. 

“Some people have this notion, not necessarily within our supporters groups just broadly, that they’re trying to take away the stadium from us. And I think the reality is that they took it away. They took it away, and it was the Board of Supervisors that helped them do it and the City of San Francisco. Sometimes that's like, I hate to say, keeping your friends close, your enemies closer, but there's a little bit of it like, hey, if we still want to play here, we do have to figure out how to do that given the reality is that they have the contract with parks now.”

The SF City FC Board of Directors will keep checking in with fans to make sure they want the team to stay at Kezar, according to Mansfield. 

SF City FC’s next home game is July 5th, and their final home game this regular season—they are expecting to make the USL-2 Western Conference playoffs—and possibly for foreseeable seasons at Kezar, is July 11. 

If you attend one of these games, you may hear some fans sing “Oh Kezar Stadium, I want to spend my days // at Kezar Stadiums where, SF City Plays” to the tune of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take my Eyes of You.” 

You may also hear some chant “Kezar is ours, Kezar is ours, Fuck Daniel Lurie.” 

And nearly all the fans will echo Cornejo’s advice: “Come watch City! The World Cup is too expensive and FIFA is corrupt.”