San Diego FC goes scoreless in home loss to Toronto FC

On a night that felt a bit overshadowed by the absence of Milan Iloski, San Diego FC was unable to score a single goal against Toronto FC and lost 1-0 at Snapdragon Stadium.

The only goal of the night was a penalty kick by Theo Corbeanu, and he earned it against Franco Negri. Negri went for the tackle, missed the ball and caught Corbeanu's shin. The referee went to a VAR review, and moments later Corbeanu was knocking in the penalty past Pablo Sisniega.

It was insinuated that Toronto FC would then "park the bus", focusing their efforts on keeping SDFC from scoring and giving up on opportunities to pile on another goal. That mostly ended up being true, although the backline for SDFC plays up so high that the second half wasn't without a couple of scary moments.

In the last third of the game, there were two instances in which SDFC was calling for a handball in front of the goal that would've led to a penalty shot. Both times, their cries were ignored by the referees.

On the second one, a breakaway opportunity for Hirving "Chucky" Lozano, it did appear on replay that the ball made contact with the defender's forearm. However, the referee refused to go to the monitor to take a look.

If that weren't bad enough, Lozano was setting up for a shot on goal when the referee whistled for the end of the match. Darren Smith, on the call, said that he can't remember the last time he's seen an opportunity taken away from a team like that at the end of a match before.

This 1-0 loss is going to lead to a lot of discussion tomorrow about the team missing Iloski and the referee's missed calls, but San Diego FC simply did not play their best game. Their passing was not crisp, they seemed exhausted about halfway through the second half, and there seemed to be a real struggle to finish with shots on goal after getting the ball deep into Toronto's half. That was just as important as everything else for explaining why SDFC lost this one, before they're scheduled to take on Vancouver (without Iloski's 4 goals) this weekend.