On most days, he cuts a lonesome, solitary figure on a green sea, sitting on a soccer ball at the Sharp HealthCare Performance Center, San Diego FC’s practice facility in East County.
Hirving “Chucky” Lozano trains by himself each day. Then, when SDFC begins scrimmaging, he finds a ball along the sideline and sits there watching, elbow on knee, chin on hand, alone, isolated, ostracized.
It’s been more than a month since SDFC sporting director Tyler Heaps told reporters that Lozano, the face of the franchise in its inaugural season, “will not be part of the sporting plans moving forward.” The hope, Heaps said, was to quickly find the Mexican winger a new club to enhance his chances of playing in the World Cup this summer on home soil.
In the meantime, Lozano would train on the side and not suit up for SDFC in the coming season.
We’re in mid-February. He’s still training on the side.
SDFC is running out of options. The European winter transfer window closed Feb. 2. The Liga MX window closed Feb. 9. That leaves Major League Soccer, which allows player movement until March 26. Otherwise, the club will have to wait until the summer.
The cost to SDFC is money, on the hook for the remaining three years of a contract that paid him $7.6 million last season.
The cost to Lozano is a lifelong dream.
“I have spoken with him more than once about this situation,” Mexican national coach Javier Aguirre said at a Jan. 21 news conference. “The conversation is private, of course, but I’ll say this: I have more arguments (for taking someone) if players are playing.
“It’s his decision. I do like that they are at least physically and football-wise in shape, you know?”
What’s the hold-up, then?
Lozano, it turns out.
Multiple sources close to SDFC and MLS have said the 30-year-old left wing has expressed a desire to stay in San Diego and collect his money, even if means sabotaging his World Cup hopes and derailing the remainder of his pro career. He moved his wife and children to San Diego last year after his transfer from Dutch club PSV Eindhoven.
They like it. He likes it. He doesn’t want to leave.
“I’ve always said that I want the best for Hirving, and I think giving him the chance to play in a World Cup at home is a huge deal, and I still hold that opinion,” SDFC coach Mikey Varas told reporters in Spanish last week in Mexico City ahead of the CONCACAF Champions Cup game against Pumas UNAM. “But I don’t comment much on a man’s decisions, because each man has to make his own.”
So the stalemate continues. The game of chicken continues.
SDFC’s leverage is the World Cup. Lozano’s leverage is the estimated $20 million remaining on his MLS contract.
Unlike other professional leagues in the United States, where athletes under contract are routinely traded, international soccer transactions — monetary transfers that typically involve a new contract — are closer to three-dimensional chess. You have the selling club, the buying club, the player and his agent; all must be in alignment.
Sources said there has been “plenty of interest” in Lozano, who had 11 goals and nine assists in 31 appearances last season, and even tentative deal frameworks proposed. Lozano, so far, has failed to engage, believing there is a way back at SDFC.
So far, there isn’t. SDFC didn’t include him on its roster for the Concacaf Champions Cup, the annual tournament for the region’s top pro club, and advanced past the opening round without him, eliminating Pumas 4-2 in a two-leg aggregate.
The MLS opener is next weekend against CF Montreal at Snapdragon Stadium. He isn’t expected to be on that roster, either.
Lozano’s relationship with Varas deteriorated in early October, when he was subbed at halftime of a game at Houston and suspended following a heated verbal altercation in the locker room. He didn’t play in either of the next two games and came off the bench for the remainder of the playoffs.
Heaps and Varas announced the decision to drop Lozano on Jan. 9, shortly after preseason camp opened.
“Holistically, all together, it’s not a fit,” Varas said.
It’s an expensive decision for the new club. SDFC paid PSV Eindhoven a $12 million transfer fee and then made Lozano the fifth-highest-paid player in MLS.
His contract was for four years with an additional two years of club options. According to MLS Players Association figures, he made $7.6 million last season, although some of that came from performance bonuses above a base salary of $6 million, which he still gets as long as he shows up to training.
“Look, this is professional sport,” Heaps, the sporting director, said last month. “We understand that this is a business, and there’s a business side to it, too. This was a decision that was made with the owners also looking at that from the business side. We understand there are going to be implications.”
It’s another way of saying that SDFC chairman Mohamed Mansour, an Egyptian billionaire, and his Sycuan tribe partners are willing to take the financial hit.
“We’ve made a decision across the entire club, leadership all the way up to ownership,” Varas said. “Everybody is on the same page.”
San Diego FC wing Hirving “Chucky” Lozano calls for a handball during a game against Toronto FC at Snapdragon Stadium earlier this season. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
If this were the NFL or NBA, the club would be desperately trying to shed Lozano’s bloated salary to create cap space. But Lozano is a designated player, which in MLS counts only as $743,750 against the cap no matter how much he makes above that. And SDFC has some of the most cap flexibility in the league.
Another motivation for moving him is to free up his designated player slot — except MLS teams are allowed three DPs and SDFC has used only two. SDFC so far has opted not to fill it, satisfied with just one in Danish right wing Anders Dreyer, but is expected to explore adding a DP during the summer transfer window when more players are available.
As for Lozano, SDFC will continue taking calls and working with Barry Whelan, a respected agent from the Unique Sports Group that has brokered some of the biggest deals in global soccer.
SDFC’s preference, of course, would be a straight transfer that would mitigate much of the financial loss. There are also loan deals with the option to buy, or other hybrid deals that might involve SDFC absorbing part of his salary.
But in international soccer, it takes three to tango.
The countdown to the 2026 World Cup continues to tick. Lozano continues to sit on a ball on the sideline at practice, elbow on knee, chin on hand.
Lozano has not been made available to the media since December or commented publicly about his future in other ways. But his Instagram page has videos and photos of him interacting with local fans, most recently at a youth soccer tournament. His profile identifies him as “futbolista profesional, San Diego.” His profile photo is of him in an SDFC jersey, pointing at its crest.
“Again, this wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly,” Heaps said last month. “It’s a very difficult one. It also shows the commitment from the owners of what we’re trying to do here.”