San Diego FC traded another highly paid player, landed a midfielder from a familiar place and made up for a recent defender\u2019s departure with some Major League Soccer-caliber depth in the final hours of the league\u2019s transfer deadline.<\/p>\n
The acquisition of veteran defender Sam Vines and young midfielder David Mimbang ahead of Wednesday\u2019s 9 p.m. transfer deadline could go a long way toward determining whether SDFC (8-8-6) makes the MLS postseason. The club heads into this weekend owning the eighth (and final) Western Conference playoff spot.<\/p>\n
San Diego began the day by acquiring Vines on loan from the Houston Dynamo in exchange for its third-round pick in the 2028 MLS SuperDraft.<\/p>\n
Vines, 27, has played in three matches this season. He made 80 appearances over two stints (2018-21, 2024-25) with the Colorado Rapids, spending time with Belgium\u2019s Royal Antwerp FC in between. SDFC carries a club option on the loan that could keep Vines in San Diego through December 2027.<\/p>\n
Vines plays the same position \u2014 left back \u2014 as Luca Bombino, who San Diego FC sold to England\u2019s Stoke City FC earlier this week for a reported $5 million transfer fee. While it\u2019s unreasonable to expect Vines to take his place, he could help complement Kieran Sargeant, Oscar Verhoeven and others at the position.<\/p>\n
SDFC turned to a familiar place \u2014 Denmark \u2013 to land Mimbang. The 18-year-old was acquired from SDFC\u2019s sister club, FC Nordsj\u00e6lland \u2013 the same team that formerly employed SDFC captain Jeppe Tverskov and wing Marcus Ingvartsen. Both clubs are part of the same Right to Dream system.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid is a player we\u2019ve been tracking closely within Right to Dream, and bringing him to San Diego was a real group effort and a great example of the collaboration across our sporting departments,\u201d SDFC sporting director Tyler Heaps said.<\/p>\n
Heaps said the Cameroon native \u201chas the physical tools, technical quality and mentality to continue developing, and we believe San Diego FC is a great environment for him to take that next step.\u201d<\/p>\n
SDFC wrapped the day by dealing Lewis Morgan to Toronto FC in exchange for an international roster spot.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old Scot\u2019s tenure in San Diego was as brief as it was expensive. In December, SDFC paid $450,000 in general allocation money to acquire Morgan from the New York Red Bulls. He appeared in 18 matches for SDFC, logging three assists without scoring a goal.<\/p>\n
Morgan is earning $1.86 million this season, making him the third-highest-paid player on SDFC\u2019s rolls behind Hirving \u201cChucky\u201d Lozano (now on loan with LA Galaxy) and Anders Dreyer.<\/p>\n
Toronto FC general manager Jason Hernandez said Morgan has \u201cestablished himself as an impactful attacker\u201d in previous stops with CF Miami and the Red Bulls.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis flexibility to play across multiple positions in the attack will be a valuable quality for our group moving forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And moving forward for SDFC? The azul and chrome will play Saturday afternoon at Orlando City. The match starts at 4:30 p.m. and will air on Apple TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego FC traded another highly paid player, landed a midfielder from a familiar place and made up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2044,181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-451813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-high-school-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}