San Francisco City FC fans worry that local soccer is becoming increasingly driven by politics and financial motives. As the team plays its last full season at Kezar Stadium, fans are also cutting ties to the 2026 FIFA World Cup a few weeks before the Bay Area hosts games.
A young fan joins chants in support of the San Francisco City Football Club during their game against Davis Legacy Soccer Club at Kezar Stadium on May 17. 2026. This will be the team’s last full season based at Kezar Stadium. (Aryk Copley for KQED)
Indeed, for many SF City fans, rooting for their team means embodying the spirit of San Francisco itself.
“SF City is grassroots. It’s DIY,” said Ozzy Palacio, a fan who also helps run a zine for club members. They were surrounded by the loudest group of fans in the stadium. Drums beat nonstop, kids and adults alike started chants and banners identified the team’s supporter groups — Northsiders, Kezar Union, Faultline Offenders, YOFC — each with their own identity and history, but rallying under the banner of Bahía de Frisco.
Many fans have team memberships, which give them the right to vote on almost every major decision. Similar to what professional teams in Germany do, SF City runs on a 50+1 ownership model, where club members hold a majority of team shares.
“Choosing SF City was never a question for me,” Palacio said. A fourth-generation Bay Area resident, they grew up surrounded by lovers of the beautiful game. Palacio’s father played for the Oakland Stompers, and they themselves played soccer for more than a decade before becoming SF City fans.
“There’s so much love here,” Palacio said. “It’s sharing beers and giving somebody a scarf to borrow that doesn’t have one —and teaching somebody what offside means.”
Thunderous cheers cut off Palacio. Forward Kai Oppenheim scored the team’s first goal before the third minute of the match. Boosted by this momentum, SF City went on to win 3-0.
But the fantastic home opener was also a bittersweet reminder for the team that this will be its last full season based at Kezar Stadium: the first home of the San Francisco 49ers on the southeast corner of Golden Gate Park.
Next year, an entirely new team funded by private investors and backed by city officials will take over, leaving SF City without a home field.
For many SF City supporters, the change is evidence that soccer in the Bay Area is becoming more beholden to financial and political interests — something they say is also happening on a global stage ahead of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. And unlike other teams in the region, SF City is not promoting the tournament, which includes six matches at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Instead, fans say that supporting existing local soccer teams will help keep the sport accessible for all.
Take me home to Kezar Stadium?
Kezar Stadium stands as a survivor of San Francisco’s sporting past, a physical link to the eras of the now-demolished Candlestick Park and Seals Stadium.
Opened in 1925, it has hosted the city’s high school football championship game — the legendary Turkey Bowl — for almost a century, along with dozens of different professional and amateur teams over the decades. And SF City fans relish being part of this history.
“Muni bus, take me home … to the place I belong,’ supporters sang throughout the match against Davis Legacy to the tune of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”: “Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, take me home … Muni bus.”
While SF City has called Kezar Stadium home for the past decade, it’s part of a long line of soccer teams that have used the space as a launching pad to grow the sport’s popularity — in a city where baseball and American football usually dominate.
Next year, the field will welcome Golden City FC, which will play in the MLS Next Pro league. (In the United States soccer league system, this is one rung “above” the USL League Two, which is where SF City plays.)
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie himself broke the news of Golden City FC’s arrival last year through a social media video. The new team, Lurie said, would invest in renovating the historic stadium. “It’s going to make Kezar even better.
This is good news for San Francisco,” he insisted. In a press release, the Mayor’s office called it “a landmark public-private partnership” that would also help boost local businesses.
City officials soon after negotiated a permit agreement with Golden City FC ownership — which the Board of Supervisors approved unanimously — giving the team the right to use the stadium for all regular season home games and playoff matches. In return, Golden City FC is expected to invest $10 million in upgrades, with over half going to renovating the field turf, and some spent on improving the seating areas and scoreboard.
But questions have dogged Golden City FC since Lurie’s announcement. The San Francisco Standard reported a few days later that one of the team’s co-owners is a longtime donor to Tipping Point — a nonprofit founded by Lurie, which raised some ethical concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
And most recently, SFGATE looked into whether the team will actually be able to meet the city’s Sept. 30, 2027, deadline to complete 50% of the required stadium improvements and play their first match by that same date.
The team is on track to start work on the field in December after the end of the high school football season, said Tamara Aparton, deputy director of communications for the city’s Recreation and Park Department. “It’s a little tricky because there are windows they can work in,” she said. “There haven’t been any changes to the schedule.”
Golden City FC also confirmed to KQED that the team is on track to start improvements in December and aims to compete in the 2027 MLS Next Pro season.
In the meantime, the team has kept its online presence minimal. Its website only shows the team’s initials and contact information, while its Instagram account had not posted anything by late May.
“We’re really quiet, and it’s very intentional,” a team spokesperson told KQED. “We’ve been working behind the scenes on go-to-market strategies … But to be fair, we won’t hit the on button until probably sometime late first quarter [of 2027].”
‘Why this is our home’
As Golden City FC establishes itself at Kezar Stadium next year, SF City will get a lot less playing time on the field. Team leadership said next season may include only one game at Kezar Stadium — down from four this current season. Cox Stadium at San Francisco State University will host most of SF City’s home games next season, but details are still being finalized.
Players will adapt to this change to keep giving their best, SF City head coach Berdi Merdanov said. “I like to think that we’re here to expand our territory. Cox Stadium is new territory,” he said, adding that he’s very optimistic about the team’s athletic potential. As of this story’s publishing, the team remains undefeated and is leading its division.
“Home is home in San Francisco,” Merdanov said.
Fans like Palacio say they’ll stick with the team when it moves to new turf. But there’s also some uncertainty from losing a space that’s so beloved by supporters, they added. “The uncertainty comes from not knowing where we’re going to play,” they said. “If our team and everybody’s going to be able to get there. Because it’s a point of access at the end of the day.”
Others see SF City’s move away from Kezar as an outright injustice. “This is very clearly the community club, the San Francisco club,” said fan Asa Vaziri, who throughout the 90-minute game did not stop waving the team’s massive banner above his head. “We’re kind of just being kicked out by money.”
“I strongly believe football should be accessible,” he explained, adding that teams like SF City provide affordable opportunities to watch a live soccer game in a time when more visible soccer tournaments, like the World Cup, are out of reach for those who cannot afford ticket prices.
“I think [FIFA] has proven it’s more about profits,” he said. “It’s just so blatant this year that I really have no desire to partake. I’m glad that SF City offers something else.”
FIFA has frustrated many soccer lovers over how it has managed the 2026 World Cup, which starts June 11 in Mexico City. Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara will host five group stage matches and one from the knockout phase of the competition.
Gianni Infantino, who heads the sport’s governing body, was criticized for mixing sports with politics when he awarded President Donald Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize last year.
As for the price of game tickets, he’s said that demand has been unpredictable and that revenues go to support soccer programs around the world.
Most recently, California state officials have begun an investigation of FIFA’s ticketing system following reports from ticketholders who say they were assigned seats in a different category than what was advertised when they bought their tickets.
During the 2022 World Cup held in Qatar, SF City announced it would not participate in any events related to that tournament, citing the host country’s history of labor rights violations and criminalization of homosexuality.
“We are totally vocally anti-fascist,” team board member Pete Bogdis told KQED earlier this year. “The club doesn’t like the way the World Cup has turned into a giant ‘sportswashing’ machine.”
Professional teams like the San Jose Earthquakes and Bay FC are helping organize watch parties for the tournament. SF City, on the other hand, is not promoting any of the matches.
“If you want to pay thousands of dollars to watch a game outside the city, you’re happy to go watch FIFA,” team board member Isaiah Cornejo said. “If you want to spend $8-$12 to come join a community and watch a good sport inside the city, come to an SF City game.”
For fan and filmmaker Daniel Diaz, the fight to keep soccer accessible is both global — at the World Cup level — and local — making sure a smaller, supporter-owned team can keep playing close to its fans. Winning their home opener is a victory in that fight, too, he said.
“Laying claim to our home, packing out the stadium, a lot of familiar faces, singing familiar songs and joined by a whole crew of new people,” he said. “That energy shows why this is our home and why we’ll follow our club wherever.”
