One month into its inaugural season, San Diego FC is, amazingly, undefeated.
Major League Soccer’s newest team has delivered two upset victories, defeating defending MLS Cup champion LA Galaxy in its first-ever match and then bouncing Real Salt Lake on March 8 behind a pair of stoppage-time goals.
And yet SDFC coach Mikey Varas was fit to be tied on Saturday.
Why? Well, it’s all the ties.
SDFC played Saturday night to a 1-1 draw with Columbus Crew, a team Varas called one of the best in North America. The Snapdragon Stadium tie came two weeks after the club played St. Louis City SC to a scoreless draw in SDFC’s home opener.
Consider Varas’ reaction to Onni Valakari’s 69th-minute goal, the club’s first one ever at Snapdragon Stadium. The header off a corner kick sent the 30,018 fans (including the dozen or so Padres in attendance) into a frenzy. Flames shot up from stanchions behind both goals. Royal blue smoke wafted up from the ers’ section.
Varas was in no mood to celebrate.
“There’s going to be a lot of firsts this season, to be honest with you, and I think this is a testament to the work the boys have done,” he said.
“But I have no emotions to it, because I’m disappointed that we tied the game. I think if we won, I probably would have felt more joy. But this ultimately feels like a disappointment to us.
“These guys are disappointed in the locker room, and I hope that goes a long way for everybody in San Diego. Because we’re eight, nine weeks in as a club, and we just played against a top team, and we had them. We had the game to go for it, to get it, and we’re disappointed that we didn’t win.”
SDFC is 2-0-2. Players woke up Sunday morning to find the club in a three-way tie for second place in Major League Soccer’s 15-team Western Division. SDFC’s aggressive approach and knack for late-game drama is already one of the top stories in American soccer.
But mere relevance is not enough for a club that has championship aspirations in its first season.
For the second time in as many weeks, SDFC allowed the first goal and then scrambled to catch up. Hirving “Chucky” Lozano, the club’s most accomplished player, hasn’t been on the field since suffering a leg injury 30 minutes into the home opener.
And a number of near-misses and some bad luck seem to be conspiring against the club.
SDFC had two goals wiped off the board on Saturday, one because of a foul and another because the home team was ruled offside.
San Diego controlled possession for 50.4% of the match, outshot Columbus 17-7 and had more shots on goal (7) than the Crew (3). The home team’s expected goals total was 2.6, far greater than the one score it delivered.
Though four matches, SDFC has scored six goals. The expected goals metric says it should have scored 7.36.
Just one extra goal at the right time, and one of SDFC’s two draws becomes a win.
SDFC certainly had its chances late Saturday.
San Diego played 11-on-10 for the final 30 minutes after Columbus’ Malte Amundsen was assessed a red card in the 61st minute and sent off. Amundsen grabbed San Diego’s Anders Dreyer by the jersey as Dreyer dribbled past him near the top of the goal box. SDFC scored minutes later to even the match, but couldn’t convert its chances after that.
Maybe that’s why the home team was so frustrated after the final whistle blew.
“We want to be a special team. We want to be a team that fights, fights for the championships,” Valakari said. “We don’t want to be the team that plays nice football and is OK and wins some games, loses some games. We want to every week perform and get the three points.
“I think the fans here deserve it. I think we’re good enough to do it.”
Up next: SDFC will travel to Austin FC (2-2-0) next Sunday. The goal?
“Score two, three, four goals,” Valakari said, “smash the opponent and go on to the next one.”
Notable
Before the game, Varas, San Diego FC CEO Tom Penn, midfielder Anibal Godoy and Vanessa Bejarano of the ers’ union addressed fans about stopping a one-word Spanish epithet that has been chanted during the visiting team’s goal kicks. The slur marred SDFC’s first home match, and was heard again in the final minute of Saturday’s tie. The club’s “Aqui no/not here” campaign seemed to have some effect; fans chanted the slur three times in the opener and just once on Saturday – in the final seconds of stoppage time.
“I think we made a really good step in the right direction,” Varas said.
