San Diego FC isn’t letting up as regular season wraps

by Ryan Finley

San Diego FC’s expansion season has gone better than almost anyone outside of team headquarters could have predicted.

SDFC sits first in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference standings with two regular-season matches remaining. They’ve won nearly twice as many matches (17) than they’ve lost (9), far outpacing even the rosiest predictions for the league’s newest club.

They clinched a playoff spot … in August.

Coach Mikey Varas knows the happy talk is rat poison — sweet, and deadly when consumed.

So, no, SDFC will not coast through the final two regular-season matches, starting with Saturday’s 5:30 p.m. showdown against the Houston Dynamo in Texas.

“If you believe in being relentless in life, that won’t even enter your head,” Varas told reporters this week. “I don’t think that will enter any of guys’ heads. It certainly hasn’t entered mine. You want to reach the playoffs in the best conditions possible. Rhythm is part of that. Trying to be in a winning form is part of that.

“You always have something to play for. You never know how the other results will go.”

Added defender Christopher McVey: “I think it’s important for us to go into the playoffs now with a good flow.”

SDFC last won a match on Aug. 31, beating LAFC 3-1. Since then, they’ve gone 0-2-1, losing to Minnesota United and the San Jose Earthquakes and forging a 1-1 tie with Atlanta United.

San Diego and Houston last met July 5 at Snapdragon Stadium in one of the expansion club’s few duds of the year.

SDFC led 3-2 in the 87th minute when a freak collision inside the goal box broke and bloodied goalkeeper CJ dos Santos’ nose and led to a Houston penalty kick.

Ezequiel Ponce beat the hurting dos Santos to tie the match — then won it with a goal in the 10th minute of stoppage time.

But results don’t always tell the full story. And Varas said he saw enough in the losing effort to be encouraged.

“Typically, you fall into a trap of when you’re winning, you think everything’s perfect; and when you’re losing, you think everything’s bad. But that’s not actually ever the case,” he said. “And when you lose a match and you look back at it and take away the emotions, you’ll see, ‘OK, we did a lot of things well.’ We need to reinforce those things and then we need to clean up a few things.”

McVey said Houston has his team’s attention — “We want to get them back,” he said — but the home team may be even more motivated.

The Dyamo must win Saturday or else risk being eliminated from their own playoff chase.