Since San Francisco State University cut its men’s soccer program last year, Cox Stadium was left a little quieter. But on Sunday, one of the city’s soccer teams is bringing the noise back to the Swamp.

San Francisco City Football Club, the country’s oldest community-owned soccer club, plays their home opener at Cox Stadium on May 3 at 3 p.m. in one of two home games in the wooded venue. Part of the second tier of the United Soccer League, the club’s former home ground was Kezar Stadium. After last season’s announcement of the mayor’s MLSNext project, Golden City FC, the team has been forced as far out as South City.

SFSU students can attend Sunday’s match for free. SFSU’s Director of Athletics Brandon Davis worked with the club to find them a home away from home and ensure students have access to games.

“They’ve been looking at alternative homes,” Davis said. “I think anything we can do to get people on campus, especially the communities, is big… we mentioned that our games are free, and so I think they’re really trying to build their community base.”

Issay Bravo was a midfielder for the Gators when men’s soccer was cut during his senior year at SFSU. Now he’s a midfielder for SFCFC, returning to Cox Stadium alongside other university alum: the team’s captain Adrian Vasquez and forward Isaac Sandoval.

“It’s like, you’re excited and at the same time you’re kind of reminiscing, all the times you’ve been there,” Bravo said. “Overall, it’s pretty exciting to just go back to the roots.”

The club’s manager Berdi Merdanov has also played at Cox Stadium before, during stints playing for and coaching Holy Names University. He’s excited to return to the stadium, now as the home side, for two matches there versus Rancho Cordova’s San Juan Soccer Club and the club’s rivals the San Francisco Glens.

“It’s another opportunity to expand our territory per se, and try a different venue and engage more fans that way,” Merdanov said. “Especially, you know, you have a lot of students there, why not engage your students?”

Taylor Drake, a computer science major at SFSU, hails from Santa Rosa and grew up playing travel soccer around California. After following the MLS for years, Drake wanted to find a local team to support. Inspired by the amount of support for lower-tier, nonprofessional sides in countries like England, he discovered the USL and subsequently SFCFC.

“Even the smaller teams in the lower divisions, you see so much passion and support,” Drake said. “I felt like with the Kezar crowd, it was reminiscent of that.”

While Drake has never attended a game at Cox Stadium, he’s excited for the club to play in eyeshot from his dorm.

“I’m glad that SF State was kind enough to let them play here. It’ll be cool for me because I live in UPN, so it’s right outside my window,” Drake said. “Most of the season is in the summertime, and the stadium is not really getting any use during that time of the year, so it would be really cool to see them kind of set up there for the long run.”

Aaron Mansfield, the club’s members organization president, is hopeful that the club and university will continue conversations about making Cox Stadium a more permanent home for SFCFC.

“I would love to see this blossom into SF State [becoming] a part of our community, and we want to support them and make that relationship work,” Mansfield said. “I was just really blown away… Walking around campus and going to the stadium, like ‘No, this is great. We should do this. This is it.’”

While making the Swamp a home could solve the club’s current conundrum, the lack of floodlights prevents the organization from hosting games at night, a barrier that didn’t exist at Kezar Stadium.

“Maybe we can start planning on that, the club to invest in SF State if they’re willing to enter a deal with us long term,” Mansfield said. “But I totally understand… no money, no mission. So they’ve got to prioritize students and they have to prioritize infrastructure before [they] prioritize third-party sports teams. So I totally get that.”

Davis said that the university is willing to work with the club to find solutions and strike a deal. Though amidst a budget crisis, finding funding for things like lights isn’t a top priority for SFSU.

“They haven’t had lights since I’ve been here for the last 10 years or so,” Davis said. “We’d have to work through some things and I think that’d be a pretty large cost. So I don’t know, that’s going to have to come from some outside funding, and I don’t know if that’s something that’s in their budget.”

For fans like Drake, the lack of lights is the least of their concerns.

“It’s the same thing that happened to San Diego’s team where they got displaced by San Diego FC,” Drake said, referring to San Diego Loyal Soccer Club, which shuttered in 2023. “It’s really frustrating to see that over and over again. I just hope that maybe in the future they can find a more permanent playing-grounds again.”

This story was originally published on GoldenGateXpress on April 29, 2026.