by Per Gary Moody
The National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), the first and only men’s league designated by USASA as a Tier 1 national league, is proud to announce that Real San Jose has returned to the league.
The club is led by owner and manager Nick Arellano.
Arellano has extensive league-building experience at the national level of the lower divisions, having founded Real San Jose in 2007. He was a key figure in building the NPSL’s West Region, especially in the early years from 2008-2013. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from San Jose State University and a Master’s in Education from National University. He has been actively involved in San Jose soccer since graduating from Mt. Pleasant High School in 1976.
Arellano is a retired educator who spent 18 years as head boys’ soccer coach at Mount Pleasant High School and 20 years as a business/social science instructor at Yerba Buena High School. His soccer promotion experience began in 1988 when he founded Soccer Magic Magazine, a publication dedicated to promoting the northern California soccer community. With the emergence of the internet, he later founded several online soccer news sites.
“The Golden Gate Conference of the NPSL has been eagerly anticipating the return of Real San Jose to our group,” NPSL Corporate Secretary and Sacramento Gold FC owner John Nunan said. “Nick Arellano, one of our league’s pioneers, has always operated his club to the high standards we are known for. It’s great to have him back.”
Real San Jose played in the NPSL from 2007-2016.
“It is exciting to have Real San Jose in the NPSL,” Arellano said. “It feels like a homecoming as the club returns to where we started. RSJ has ridden the wave of the amateur soccer explosion of the last decade, and the NPSL has been the standard to follow. It is great to be part of this new era of NPSL on the West Coast.”
Real San Jose also spent time in the UPSL (2017-2019) and NSL (2021-2024).
More information about expansion opportunities in the NPSL can be found at npsl.com/expansion.
