Anders Dreyer savors "fairy tale" start at San Diego FC | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

San Diego is a long, long way from Denmark, a shade over 5,600 miles as the crow flies, and there are zero direct flights in between. Anders Dreyer and his fellow Danes at expansion side San Diego FC, Marcus Ingvartsen and Jeppe Tverskov, have to drive two hours north to LAX if they want to catch a non-stop to Copenhagen to visit loved ones back home.

So they’ve replicated a little piece of their homeland’s famed coffee culture – the nation of about six million people consumes approximately 20 million cups of the brew per day, a central facet of the concept of ‘hygge,’ which roughly translates as coziness and contentment in defiance of drab Nordic winters – on their morning commutes to the Sharp HealthCare Performance Center, SDFC’s brand-new training facility on Sycuan tribal land at the metropolis’ eastern edge.

“The guy who gets picked up in the morning is usually bringing the coffee. So we switch every second day to bring the coffee,” Dreyer explained to MLSsoccer.com ahead of Saturday's rematch vs. reigning MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy (4:45 pm | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+; FOX, FOX Deportes).

“It's mostly Jeppe Tverskov who is my carpool mate. So we're driving together, and it's just nice in the morning to have a little chat. And of course, when I'm winning against him in training, when we drive home, it's always nice,” wisecracked the winger.

Immediate impact

It’s a nearly 25-mile trip from Pacific Beach, where Dreyer, his wife Caecilie and their infant son Carl have made a comfortable home along the coast. But Dreyer doesn’t mind this taste of the car-centric Californian lifestyle. It’s all part of the adventure for a footballer who’s already plied his trade across a half-dozen European leagues from one end of the Old Continent to the other.

“The traffic is not so bad,” said the 27-year-old. “I lived in Brussels and I had, like, eight kilometers to the [training] facilities [at Anderlecht], but it could take 40 minutes because of the traffic. So here it’s longer, but it's less time. And of course, we are also Danish people, and we drive together. So it's nice in the morning to have a chat and a cup of coffee and talk a little bit about, maybe not football all the time.”

Believe it or not, he found SoCal’s abundant sunshine and balmy temperatures took some getting used to – “it's not often we see rain,” he joked. Yet Dreyer sounds settled and centered, and it’s shown on the pitch.

With six goals and six assists in his first 14 MLS matches, the left-footer is tied with Golden Boot presented by Audi leader Tai Baribo (11g/1a) and Cristian Espinoza (4g/8a) for most goal contributions thus far – looking like an early frontrunner for Newcomer of the Year and perhaps a place on this summer's MLS All-Star squad.

Pairing with Chucky

Often working as an inverted right winger in tandem with Mexican star Hirving “Chucky” Lozano on the opposite flank, Dreyer has feasted on opposing defenses in his new surroundings, even as he and his colleagues grapple with the significant challenges inherent to building an expansion club from the ground up.

Collectively, SDFC have already displayed a deep commitment to an intricate, methodical possession style implemented by first-year head coach Mikey Varas that’s helped them control matches to an extent that starkly contrasts their fledgling organization’s tender age – and it hasn’t prevented them from pressing opponents high and wreaking havoc in transition, either.

“Staff, coaches, but also us players, we've been very good at getting together, all of us, and starting to build relationships between the players, between everybody, and it's a good thing. We have done a lot of team bonding,” said Dreyer. “We train a lot about the way we want to play.

“The Coachella training camp [in preseason], it was a good, good week for us to train a lot and play three games against the MLS teams. And then I think from there on, we started our way into MLS.”

If you watch SDFC play, and glance at the Western Conference standings, where the Chrome-and-Azul sit third with a 7W-4L-3D record that puts them ahead of the curve relative to most expansion sides, it won’t surprise you that Dreyer, Chucky and their teammates get immersed in a rigorous daily environment once they arrive at the training ground.

“It all starts out here in El Cajon, in the facilities, with a lot of training,” said Dreyer. “From the first training, I always had a good eye for what movement Chucky is doing, and him as well to me, and then it's about continuing doing that stuff.

“Mikey and his staff have done an amazing job to get the system in our DNA, you know? And I think it doesn't matter who’s played; people know what they have to do. It helps so much, also as a new team. But yeah, it's been very good so far. Of course there is a long way to go still, but we're just enjoying every day, and we want to train and do even better.”

Vast experience

Dreyer’s worked hard, and wandered far afield, to attain this fruitful moment in his career. He was still a teenager when he broke through at Esbjerg fB, scoring a league-high 18 goals to power the second-division club’s promotion into the Superliga, Denmark’s top flight, in 2018. That helped him earn a transfer to Brighton & Hove Albion, who’d just survived their first season in the English Premier League and were carving out a reputation for savvy scouting and player development.

His dream move didn’t quite work out. Dreyer couldn’t break into the Seagulls’ first team and left for loan spells at St. Mirren in Scotland, then Heerenveen in the Netherlands, a knee injury further disrupting his progress. Some 18 months on, he decided a return home was needed to find his feet again, signing with Danish powers FC Midtjylland.

“I left early, I think I was 19 or 20, for the first time to England from Denmark. And, yeah, I didn't succeed in England, but I learned a lot from that move,” he recalled. “It was tough, but I had to get through it and learn to, how do you say, be on top of my foot every training, every game. And that's something I brought with me from an early move seven years ago.

“Of course, you learn a lot about life. I was moving away from my mom and dad to England and lived alone; it's also difficult, and you have to learn that. And I think ever since that, I've always been looking to be abroad and not in Denmark for too long, because I love to play abroad and to see new cultures and new leagues.”

He regained his form at Midtjylland, helping the Ulvene (Wolves) win league and cup trophies and earning call-ups to the Danish national team. His performances in the Superliga drew the attention of FC Rubin Kazan, eventually leading to a reported €6 million move to the Russian side.

During this time he also caught a glimpse of the assertive game model and youth-centric philosophy of the Right to Dream network of academies, which operates FC Nordsjælland and provides San Diego with the tactical framework Dreyer and his teammates are now putting into action.

“I know it from Nordsjælland in Denmark with the Right to Dream, and I just remember how annoying it was to play against them, because they were so good on the ball, and it was young players and with players with experience as well,” he said. “So it was an easy choice, actually, to go to San Diego, because the way we play is the way I want to play as a footballer: have the ball a lot and create chances. It's very fun.

“I really like when you get it under your skin and you start to get the DNA of the Right to Dream, and the way of play.”

At a crossroads

Fate would serve up another unexpected obstacle in Kazan. Just a few months into the first season of his five-year contract, in which the club was competing in the UEFA Europa Conference League and featured the likes of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and former Vancouver Whitecap Hwang In-beom on their squad, Russia invaded Ukraine, putting foreign players like him in an agonizing predicament as the chaos of war and its consequences shattered normal life in both countries.

FIFA made special contract dispensations to allow them to leave Russia if they wished, and Dreyer grabbed that opportunity, returning to Midtjylland, first on loan and later in a permanent move.

“I wanted to go home to family and be close to them,” he explained. “What happened in Russia was – it was nothing about football or anything.

“Maybe people, they think football is just fun. But there are also a lot of other things we have to take care of, like moving a family from one part of the earth to another part of the earth, and that's also something we have to go through. We want to live the dream of being in football, because it's the best job in the world, but it's also a tough job. Especially as a foreign player, I'm like 10, 12 hours away from home. So if we're two days off, I'm not going home, which other people can do. That's a part of being a footballer.”

Foundational role

Before long he was on the move again, joining Anderlecht in another multi-million-dollar transfer in 2023. He would bag 31 goals and 23 assists in 87 appearances for the Belgian heavyweights before San Diego came calling, offering not just a completely different experience in North America, but a foundational role in the birth of SDFC.

Dreyer couldn’t resist the appeal of that challenge, and he’s glad for it.

“When you go to a club, normally there is a history, there is a way to do stuff,” said the Chrome-and-Azul’s second-ever Designated Player. “But here it is brand new, and we as players here, we're the first ones who put on that San Diego shirt, and we have to start to build a culture here in San Diego in how the things are done. So that's a nice, nice experience, and that's also something that that brought me over here.

“Now I'm loving it here. Sometimes I stop and I'm at home and I'm just like, it's so nice to be here and I'm just enjoying every day,” he added. “The city is nice, the stadium, the facilities, it's nice, fans are amazing. So it's been a very, very nice fairy tale so far.”