Dominant effort leads to historic win
As San Antonio FC’S players were mingling on the field after the most lopsided win in club history, goalkeeper Jordan Farr heard a common refrain from Monterey Bay FC.
“A lot of the guys at the end for Monterey were saying, ‘What a horrible time to play you guys,’ ” Farr said. “And I couldn’t agree more.”
As SAFC surged to the top of the Western Conference through the first eight weeks of the season, almost every moment was fraught with tension. Entering Saturday, SAFC had never led by more than a single goal in 2022 and the club hadn’t found the back of the net more than once in any of four April matches.
But Saturday, coach Alen Marcina said he at last felt “a little less tense on the sideline” in the waning minutes. San Antonio delivered a dominant showing, setting a franchise record for scoring
and notching a fourth consecutive clean sheet in a 6-0 win against Monterey Bay FC at Toyota Field.
“We came out and wanted to be ruthless,” midfielder Nicky Hernandez said. “We wanted to show we’re in first place for a reason.”
San Antonio (7-1-0, 21 points) entered the year as one of the favorites to win the USL Championship and has lived up to the expectation, matching the highest point total in the
league.
SAFC stormed to a three-goal advantage during the first 45 minutes Saturday and never relented, scoring the final goal of the match in second-half stoppage time.
“We came out before halftime and we were like, ‘We need to be two or three goals up so we can get a breather,’” Hernandez said. “We’ve been winning by one or two goals, and we think we can do better than that.”
San Antonio also maintained a clean sheet for the fourth consecutive match, marking the longest streak since the club posted seven straight shutouts in 2017.
Farr was forced to deflect a Monterey Bay shot off the post in the 12th minute, but he was tested on just one other save, as San Antonio built a 27-9 lead in shots and an 11-2 margin in shots on target.
“Pressing is an 11-man concept. We believe in that and the guys demonstrated that,” Marcina said. “When called upon, players stepped up big to help keep that clean sheet.”
San Antonio stuffed the score sheet with goals from Elliot Collier in the 21st minute, Victor “PC” Giro in the 25th, Hernandez in the 39th, Mitchell Taintor in the 76th, Justin Dhillon in the 83rd and Jordan Ayimbila in the 92nd.
Hernandez, Connor Maloney, Mohammed Abu, Shannon Gomez and Fabien Garcia all notched assists, meaning all but three field players who saw the pitch earned points.
“It’s one of those days that everything connected,” Marcina said. “Just proud of the collective and proud of the guys’ commitment from the start to the end — and that’s for everyone.”
Marcina said SAFC looked to “exploit certain spaces that we knew were going to be offered to us,” generating every goal from a ball played laterally across the field.
San Antonio scored two goals on the first touch after a corner kick, and the other four were finishes by players on the end of crossing passes.
“That’s our bread and butter right there,” Hernandez said. “I think tonight showed that we’re on a different level.”
Coming into Saturday with three straight wins in league matches and the added momentum of a U.S. Open Cup victory against MLS club Austin FC, Farr saw the potential for San Antonio to slip up against a struggling Monterey
Bay FC (1-6-0, 3 points) club that entered with just three field players available off the bench.
“We knew that this was a trap game at the beginning,” Farr said. “It felt like we were going to step into it, but a lot of guys pushed those feelings to the side.”
Instead, San Antonio delivered the most dominant performance in club history, setting up next week’s road showdown against Phoenix Rising FC — the only club to hand San Antonio a loss this season.
With four players who have started matches this year still listed on SAFC’S injury report, including standout attackers Santiago Patino and David Loera, Farr believes San Antonio can grow even stronger as 2022 unfolds.
“I could really see us stepping into gear even more so at the perfect time next week,” Farr said. “I think we have more.”