Coming off back to back wins and in second-place in the Western Conference, San Diego FC travels to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park to take on the Colorado Rapids at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. SDFC has lost once in its first seven matches and come in with the second-best offense in the conference scoring 13 goals behind the 15 goals by the San Jose Earthquakes.

“We are looking to find consistency, one of the opportunities we have this week is to keep the streak going,” said SDFC head coach Mikey Varas. “That takes a lot of focus and energy to be relentless with the task at hand.”

Colorado is in seventh in the Western Conference and are coming off a 2-0 defeat on the road to the Vancouver Whitecaps. Colorado is one of the 10 original founding clubs of the league back in 1996 making it to the final the following year before falling to the eventual champion D.C. United. The Rapids made it back to the final in 2010 defeating FC Dallas 2-1 in extra time and had arguably the greatest goalkeeper ever for U.S. soccer in Tim Howard playing for the club from 2016 to 2019.

Among the standout players this season for San Diego FC are goalkeeper CJ dos Santos who has tallied three clean sheets already, which is only one behind those of Brad Stuver (Austin FC) and Yohei Takaoka (Vancouver Whitecaps).

“We’re learning about ourselves in this moment and it’s a great opportunity,” Varas added. “We are really putting the effort to make sure that we’re a consistent team.”

SDFC and Colorado will face each other again on May 14 at Snapdragon Stadium.

Photo by David Frerker