Facing a veteran-laden Major League Soccer opponent Saturday night, San Diego FC started a pair of defenders and a goalkeeper who can’t legally order an alcoholic beverage in California.
The same applied to a teenage midfielder from Brazil who entered in the second half.
So SDFC’s talk wasn’t just talk. This franchise commits itself strongly to young players.
How’s that coming along?
Give the club’s youth movement a passing grade or better for one season-plus, while appreciating that an MLS education has its costly moments for players who are younger than many collegians.
The ups and downs common among young players showed up Saturday in SDFC’s wild 3-3 tie against FC Cincinnati, before an announced crowd of 24,984 that saw Marcus Ingvartsen score deep into stoppage time only for the visitors to answer with a quality goal in the final seconds.
Center back Manu Duah, 20, and outside back Luca Bombino, 19, have held starting jobs since early in the franchise’s inaugural season. It’s to each player’s immense credit that his presence in the starting lineup Saturday, opposite Brazilian star midfielder Evander, 27, was assumed.
San Diego FC scouts and general manager Tyler Heaps rightly identified Duah as an MLS difference-maker, leading Heaps to draft the Ghana product, first overall, after just one year with UC Santa Barbara.
A similar general forecast for Bombino, obtained from MLS powerhouse LAFC, hit the mark.
Against Cincinnati, each second-year player had good moments but also separately may have contributed to a goal allowed.
We’re finding out this spring about goalkeeper Duran Ferree, 19, who backed up a pair of veterans last year.
The Del Norte High School alum made his 12th MLS start Saturday, and increase his total of above-average saves. His reactions appear faster than those of several MLS veteran ‘keepers.
On the other hand, the 6-foot-2 teen whiffed in his attempt to snatch a corner kick, resulting in a tap-in goal that broke a 1-1 tie.
The new young guy on the scene is Pedro Soma, who scarcely played with SDFC last year.
The Brazilian 19-year-old, availing himself of increased playing time relating to captain and defensive midfielder Jeppe Tverskov’s injury, has shown an adult’s strength and advanced composure in the past two matches.
Saturday, three days after he set up a goal in the 5-0 win over disjointed Austin FC, the midfielder drove a perfect through ball to Amahl Pellegrino. The wing finished for a tying second goal in the 66th minute.
San Diego FC has supported its young players with veteran standouts headed by the Danish tandem of Ingvartsen and Anders Dreyer.
“It’s nice to see young guys stepping into the pitch and just deliver for us guys,” Dreyer said this week. “It’s amazing. I enjoy it. I know they enjoy it, but they also are ready to work even harder. After they get a success, they want to get more of that. It’s about hard work, and it pays off in the end.”
Player development was a calling card of SDFC coach Mikey Varas, whose teaching ability helped get him this job and a spot on the U.S. Men’s National Team staff.
Varas described the first stage of a young professional’s progress.
“They get in the game,” the coach said, “and they just want to make sure that they can hang, and they can maintain the game. Because that’s the first test.”
The next step? “I can have a big effect on the game,” Varas said, of young players’ mindset.
It was an eventful night for the under-21 crew.
But the whole SDFC team will take away a sour lesson from Saturday’s match: Instead of earning three points, Varas’ club erred just enough to get punished by opportunistic Cincinnati.
Exploiting questionable positioning by SDFC, coach Pat Noonan’s attackers denied Varas’ team the win via two impressive passes, leading to a goal that surely made for a happy flight back to Ohio.
A perfect long pass curled between SDFC’s tall tandem of center backs, Duah and Christopher McVey.
A 6-foot-4 forward, working against the veteran McVey, headed it to an open teammate, leaving Ferree helpless to deny a tying goal virtually at the final whistle. “The challenge is, we’ve got to close games better,” Varas said.
It felt like two points lost for SDFC, which will finish this phase of the season Saturday at home, against Vancouver in a rematch of the Western Conference final that the Whitecaps, exploiting San Diego’s youthful back line, won 3-1.