San Diego FC still doesn\u2019t know who they\u2019ll play in the best-of-three first round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.<\/p>\n
But at least the times and dates are set.<\/p>\n
SDFC will play its first-ever postseason game on Oct. 26 against the winner of Wednesday\u2019s play-in game between the Portland Timbers and Real Salt Lake. Game 1 will start at 6:30 p.m. from Snapdragon Stadium.<\/p>\n
SDFC will travel to either Portland or Salt Lake City for Game 2, which will be held Nov. 1 at 6:30 p.m. The teams will return to San Diego for an if-necessary Game 3, which will be played Nov. 9 at a time to be determined. All three matches will air on MLS Season Pass, with a chance that Game 3 could also air on a linear TV network.<\/p>\n
Visiting SDFC wrapped its regular season with a 4-0 win over Portland late Saturday. Anders Dreyer and Amahl Pellegrino scored two goals apiece and goalkeeper CJ dos Santos notched his 10th clean sheet of the season. The victory, coupled with the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 loss to FC Dallas, earned San Diego FC the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs. The expansion club owned the tiebreaker by virtue of having more regular-season wins (19) than Vancouver (18).<\/p>\n
SDFC midfielder Jeppe Tverskov called it an \u201calmost perfect game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think from the first whistle, we felt like we were in control,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, yeah, it\u2019s amazing to get to the final game of the regular season like this, going into the playoffs with confidence also.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, shout-out. No goals, scoring four goals ourselves, and just in general a good performance. So, yeah, only smiles today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Numbers game<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s win extended SDFC\u2019s record for the most wins (19) and points (63) by an expansion team in Major League Soccer history.<\/p>\n
The club also won 12 road matches, becoming just the second team in league history \u2014 and the first since 1998 \u2014 to accomplish that feat. SDFC\u2019s 37 road points are tied for the most ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have all the stats, but .. we hit some pretty major milestones that nobody can take away from these guys,\u201d coach Mikey Varas said. \u201cAnd every single staff member and every single fan, you can\u2019t take that away from us. And so it\u2019s about celebration \u2014 celebrating the accomplishments, resting, recovering and then getting back in.\u201d<\/p>\n
By finishing first in the Western Conference and fourth in the MLS Supporters\u2019 Shield standings, SDFC earned a berth in next year\u2019s Concacaf Champions Cup tournament. It marks the club\u2019s first-ever international tournament.<\/p>\n
Ingvartsen returns<\/p>\n
Marcus Ingvartsen entered Saturday\u2019s match in the 82nd minute, marking his first appearance since Aug 17.<\/p>\n
Injuries have marred a promising season for the Danish forward. He played in each of SDFC\u2019s first four matches, scoring a goal, before going down with an injury in the club\u2019s March 15 draw with Columbus at Snapdragon Stadium. He played in one match in May, one in June and one in August before coming off the bench Saturday.<\/p>\n
San Diego is 6-0-2 when Ingvartsen plays, outscoring their opponents 18-5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego FC still doesn\u2019t know who they\u2019ll play in the best-of-three first round of the Major League…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":316694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,3549,15520,7264,221,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-316693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-fc","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-soccer","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115402435874141983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}