Just three weeks prior to their debut game in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, San Diego FC had begun their preseason for 2026, coming back a week early from an offseason that went by in a blink. With less than a month to prepare, there was a question of whether the team could find its form quickly enough to compete against a squad in Liga MX team Pumas UNAM, who were already four games into their season.
By halftime of the Feb. 3 matchday and down 1-0 at home in Snapdragon Stadium, that question burned in the back of the minds of anxious fans. For the players and coaching staff, however, there was never a doubt. The Chrome and Azul would go on to dominate the second half, scoring four goals in a span of less than 20 minutes, sending the Pumas and their large group of disappointed travelling supporters back to Mexico City, where UNAM will host the second-leg match of the round on Feb. 10.
Analyzing the moment, though, there are some key takeaways from the match that SDFC and their supporters can walk away with.
Tale of two halves
In the first half of Tuesday’s game, San Diego FC looked very much like a team that had less than a month of preseason training. While they would control possession and come out aggressively on the opposing side of the field, miscommunication and mistimed plays would disrupt multiple sequences and stifle their finishing, leaving them with eight shot attempts but only one on goal.
To make matters worse, Pumas had one sequence of their own that can only be described as perfection, ending with an athletic bicycle kick finish from Paraguayan forward Robert Morales to put them up 1-0. Then came halftime.
SDFC would come out on the attack, turning up the pressure to maximum. Unlike in the first half, they executed as a squad with much greater efficiency and communication. Pumas would sit back and attempt to clog finishing lanes, hoping for another opportunity to breakaway like they did in the first half, but SDFC would finally break through in the 68th minute. It was then that second-year defender Manu Duah sent the home crowd at Snapdragon into a frenzy after a brilliant header set up by Danish forward Anders Dreyer on a corner kick.
From then on, the floodgates burst open, and San Diego would go on to score three more goals in 17 minutes. They never looked back, and they never had any doubt about turning the result around in their favor.
“Their break got cut by a week, they had to come back a week earlier, and they played against a team who’s four games into their season. Not one excuse dripped from a single pore of them,” head coach Mikey Varas said in a postgame presser. “I think you’re not always rewarded in life for having the right mentality, but when you are rewarded, how sweet is it?”
Coaching masterclass
Saying that head coaches are important to the success of a team is redundant to say the least, but it is games like these that demonstrate their importance.
The adjustments made by Varas at halftime were crucial. They first moved young wingback Luca Bombino further up the left side of the field, which shifted the formation towards a 3-4-3, rather than the squad’s usual 4-3-3. This strategic shift, as Varas would reveal later, positioned Dreyer slightly lower on the opposite side. This allowed SDFC to apply even more pressure in UNAM’s third of the field, taking advantage of the lack of offensive pressure coming from their opponent.
Varas’s first substitutions of midfielder David Vasquez and forward Alex Mighten were also another key decision that turned the tide. Putting belief in his young guys on the bench and allowing them to shine in the continent’s biggest club competition, San Diego was rewarded with immediate impact from both players as they made their mark in the back of the net with three goal contributions combined.
“I think if you’ve ever experienced this, where you’re trying to open a jar, and you can’t open it, and you pass it to the person next to you, and they open it really easily. It’s a little case of that and also that these game-changers who came in were ready to make an impact,” Varas said of his players.
Young standouts
Varas’ decision-making shifted the strategy of the second half to put the team in the most favorable position to win, but as with all sports, the game ultimately comes down to the execution of the athletes on the ground.
In this match, where many of the veteran squad members struggled to finish on their opportunities, it was the younger players who seized control and secured a statement victory for San Diego in the Champions Cup. The average age of all four scorers, Duah, Vasquez, Mighten and Bombino, is only 20 years old. Duah and Bombino played much of last season together as rookie starters on defense for the team. They had noticeable growth and improvement throughout the 2025 season, and if one game is any sign, it doesn’t appear they will hit a wall anytime soon.
Both made crucial plays defensively and offensively, intercepting Pumas on some of the few runs they made, making key passes in the opposing half and finishing on their scoring opportunities. Bombino found himself earning recognition from CONCACAF as the Superior Player of the Match, and regardless of San Diego’s three-goal advantage in the aggregate score, he isn’t looking to let up on any pressure at Estadio Olímpico Universitario next week.
“Warrior mentality first and foremost, we know we’re going there to get a result, and we’ll have travelling support, but we know the fans back here are giving us all the strength they have, so we’re going to go in and leave it all on the field,” Bombino said in a postgame interview with CONCACAF Champions Cup.
