SDFC looks toothless while losing rematch against RSL

San Diego FC lost their third straight game on Saturday, their first loss at Snapdragon Stadium, dropping a 3-1 game to Real Salt Lake. It was not fun.

While Diego Luna didn't score his first goal (and the first goal of the match by anyone) until close to halftime, it did feel like Real Salt Lake was the better team from early on in the afternoon match.

Warren Barton, on the radio broadcast, described it perfectly about 25 minutes into the match when he said, "SDFC's passes are not crisp, they're off by a yard or so, and the energy just isn't there through the early part of the game. RSL looks to be a much better team right now when on the attack."

That never really changed. These last two weeks have been the first time that I've actually thought that SDFC looked like an expansion team in its inaugural season.

The players looked like a deer in headlights at home on Saturday, surprised by RSL's aggressive play and unable to figure out how to create chances for themselves.

From my layman's point of view, it appeared that RSL played their defense way up and dared SDFC to kick long balls deep down the field to get behind them and create chances, which goes against how SDFC wants to set up their offense. This isn't the first time we've seen another team play SDFC this way, and Mikey Varas will undoubtedly be looking for counters to keep it from sinking the team's offense again next week.

The only goal SDFC scored, which made it 1-1 going into the half, was a penalty kick sent in by Chucky Lozano but created by the veteran play of Anibal Godoy (who perhaps flopped to get the call). They'll need something more to get their offense out of neutral.

About the Padres....

The Padres went 30 innings without scoring a run, getting shut out in three straight games in the process. They finally scored on Saturday night, but still lost 4-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays.

Their offense is stuck somewhere between "we're too injured to put hits together" and "the stars are trying to win the game by themselves."

The team absolutely needs Jackson Merrill and Jake Cronenworth back pronto, but there are still well over 100 games left in the season, so I don't know that we need to freak out about this just yet.

Don't look now, but here come the Wave

San Diego Wave FC has had a couple of tomato cans in front of them the last two weeks and they have handled their business. They've scored 7 goals and given up just 1 over those two games, including a 3-0 win over Chicago Stars FC on Saturday.

I did not watch this game, which was happening while the SDFC game was happening and also maybe when the Padres game was starting and when the Clippers game was ending (I don't really want to talk about that ending right now). I hope the Wave play a game soon that has less viewing competition so that I can watch, because they're climbing the ranks back to respectability in the NWSL.

This week in Section 1904

First of all, I believe every paid subscriber should have gotten their invite to the Section 1904 Discord server by now. Check your email inbox, check your spam, and if you can't find it anywhere you can always email me and make it my problem.

Second, Darren is leaving for vacation on Tuesday. He's bringing a bunch of recording equipment with him, so expect a lot of check-ins and attempts at new forms of content, but a reminder that we're still figuring all of this out. This will be our first time with either me or Darren out of the country and on a very different schedule, so please bear with us while we try our best to make daily content for you and thank you for your continued support.

I'm going to try to record with a couple of guests this week (if you're interested, you know where to find me) while also trying to find times that might work to record in both San Diego and Spain. Pray for good hotel wifi.

Third, starting tomorrow morning, Section 1904 is going to have a daily morning newsletter. You'll see what it's about when you receive it tomorrow AM. It will be separate from the newsletter you're subscribed to now, that sends you all of the posts and podcast episodes posted on this site, which means you'll be able to unsubscribe from it if you don't want it without it changing anything else about your membership.

Finally, make sure you're following Section 1904 on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.