San Diego FC gets drilled at home by Vancouver Whitecaps - again
Well, at least San Diego FC didn't go down 3-0 this time. There's that sliver of a silver lining.
It was only 2-nil at the half.
Otherwise, the Vancouver Whitecaps' visit to Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night wasn't much different than their previous one, a convincing performance last November in the Western Conference final that sent them to MLS Cup and ended SDFC's magical inaugural season.
That was a 3-1 final score. This finished 4-2.
A year ago, though, the game matched clearly the two best teams in the West, tied atop the standings with 63 points. And a year ago, Snapdragon was soldout, loud, energetic, electric, pumping, rocking.
And now?
The Whitecaps still lead the West and have gone unbeaten in eight of their last nine matches. But everything has changed with SDFC, from winning just one of their last 13 to plummeting down the standings to 10th (and currently out of the playoffs) to getting yet another red card to Saturday's subdued crowd generously announced at 23,906.
Which is another way of saying: Major League Soccer's seven-week break for the World Cup can't come soon enough.
Nor can the summer transfer window, when teams can add reinforcements.
“We all feel we played against the best team in the league,” coach Mikey Varas said. “This is the standard right now. They're flying. Metrics show it, eye test shows it, standings show it. … We started the game pretty stable and showed we can hang with them, but losing too many duels, too many individual actions that they don't miss and we miss.
“This is the difference when you play against really high-quality teams. It doesn't take a lot for that to change.”
SDFC wore its alternate kit Saturday, white jerseys with blue and orange accents, while Vancouver dressed in the dark blue that SDFC normally wears at home. It took a minute to realize, since the team in blue had all the possession.
SDFC usually dominates the ball but found itself chasing much of the night, amassing just 44% possession in the first half and zero shots on goal. The Whitecaps had 56% and six.
That's usually a recipe for an early deficit, and it was. Tristan Blackmon, the 2025 MLS defender of the year, lofted a curling long ball to German star Thomas Muller, who sent a low cross that Brian White redirected past goalkeeper CJ dos Santos for a 1-0 lead after 30 minutes.
That was White's ninth goal of the season. He had 10 by halftime after a defensive miscue led to a 2-on-1 in front of goal.
That also gave him two goals in the first half in each of his last two appearances at Snapdragon.
SDFC pulled one back in the 52nd minute on David Vazquez's shot – the first on goal of the night – from the top of the box. That briefly gave SDFC life, and Marcus Ingvartsen had a header flash wide of the post for a would-be equalizer.
But Vancouver struck again in the 65th minute after another SDFC giveaway, resulting in a 3-on-2 going the other way that substitute Bruno Caicedo tucked away for a 3-1 lead.
The significance?
The Whitecaps entered the night 33-0-0 in MLS history when scoring three or more goals.
“Unfortunately,” Varas said, “at the moment that we have a lot of momentum, we concede against that momentum, which always makes it a harder situation.”
Make it 34-0-0.
It only got worse from there. Halftime sub Luca Bombino got his second yellow card in the 72nd minute and was ejected, the ninth time in 19 games this season an SDFC player has seen red. (At least they lead the league in something.)
Both yellows were arguably soft, but Varas’ words afterward were not.
“The referee makes two yellow cards in 25 minutes on a player who had two fouls,” he said. “I think the league has to take a serious look at what's happening at our team and across the league. You have multiple teams with five red cards 15 games into a season. We've played 240 minutes with a player down.
“(There are) a lot of situations that don't look clear and obvious, that you should be playing a man down. You need to do something about that, because here we're trying to build football in this country. We want to play football. … Of course you have to make sure there is player safety involved, but we also need to play as much 11 vs. 11 as possible.
“If you look around the world, this situation is not happening.”
Three minutes later, White should have had a hat trick but his header that beat dos Santos was guided in by Ralph Priso.
By that point, the Whitecaps may have been feeling empathetic, handing 18-year-old SDFC sub Bryan Zamble his first MLS goal in stoppage time when his shot was fumbled by backup goalkeeper Isaac Boehmer, playing because All-Star Yohei Takaoka was serving a red-card suspension, and rolled into the net.
“Today we had good actions, and that was followed by bad actions,” midfielder Onni Valakari said. “Overall, it was not good enough today.
“The game of football, it goes up and down. This is a tough moment.”
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 8:51 PM.