SAFC opens the first game of a three-match road trip as they head to Colorado this weekend to face Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC. This will make for the second of four matches between the two teams this season. San Antonio defeated Colorado in the season opener 3-0 behind Santiago Patiño’s hat trick. The match will mark SAFC’s debut in Colorado’s new downtown stadium.
SAFC will have to shake off the disappointment of giving up an 89th minute goal against rivals RGV-FC that turned a 3-point win into a 1-point draw. This despite putting up 14 shots against RGV-FC and 10 shots on target, the second most in team history.
SAFC Keeper Matt Cardone had nothing but respect for RGV-FC Keeper Tyler Deric’s performance last week but felt his team should have finished stronger. “Tyler [Deric] made a number of great saves to close the first half, and even at the beginning of the second half to keep his team in the game. But, with the number of chances that we got and the talent and ability with the players we have I think we should have done a little better and put those chances away.”
Marcus Epps did his part, finishing a nice-looking run with an even better shot, blasting his way past Deric for the first half lead. Epps is only the second player for SAFC to score multiple goals on the young season. But Epps shared in the disappointment of last week all the same.
"It’s definitely tough. We thought we deserved the three points. We fought hard and there was a lot of good stuff from the group. Taking a point is disappointing, but objectively when we look at the game there’s a lot of positives. We take that and build on it for next game.”
Despite the result last week, SAFC are still 5th in all of USL Championship with 9 total goals scored and 5th in shots with 67. When you look at their conversion rate, their struggle in the final third is more apparent. Their conversion rate is 17% which ranks them a middle-of-the-league 14th. This team could be even more explosive than they’ve shown to this point if they can solve that aspect of their game.
For Colorado, this will be their first game since May 21st and only their 4th of the season. To this point they have one win and two losses on the young season. The win was an impressive 4-0 victory over Sporting Kansas City II. They followed that up losing the debut game in their new stadium in front of a sold-out crowd, a 3-1 defeat at the hands of New Mexico United. Colorado is looking to improve upon a poor season that saw them win only 2 games in 2020.
Hadji Barry has been the most impressive Offensive player for Colorado thus far, scoring 3 goals in 3 games. Michee Ngalina leads the way in Assists with two.
In goal, Colorado has already used two Keepers. Andrew Pannenberg has appeared twice, recording 3 saves and one clean sheet. Abraham Rodriguez has two saves in his lone appearance. Jimmy Ockford paces the Defenders with 18 clearances.
In recent player news for Colorado, Forward Austin Dewing left the team for reassignment with the U.S. Air Force. Dewing will go on to complete his pilot training. Dewing had been with the team since 2019 and his participation was part of the Air Force World Class Athlete Program.
As San Antonio FC hits the road for a three-match road trip, Epps knows it’s a different animal away from home, where SAFC are already 0-0-1 on the season. “On the road you can’t control everything, and we talk as a team about controlling what we can control. Like (Saturday), going a man down. We can’t control the referee’s decision, but we can control the work we put in and how we approach each minute and each play. You take those lessons into the next game and we build that into our resilience to control the controllable when we play these next away games.”
SAFC will be counting on that work and resilience to earn some wins on this long road trip.
The Matchup (W-D-L)
San Antonio FC (2-2-1, 8 points) at Colorado Switchbacks FC (1-0-2, 3 points)
Weidner Field, Saturday June 5th, 2021
Kickoff 7:00pm Central Time
Current Form (W-D-L)
San Antonio FC - 2021 Road Record 0-0-1
W-D-L-W-D
Colorado Switchbacks FC – 2021 Home Record 0-0-1
L-W-L-
All Time History (W-D-L)
Saturday will mark the eleventh meeting between the two clubs overall. They are all-even through nine league games (3-3-3). San Antonio only earned one point in this series in 2019 when they last met, and they have already bested that mark in 2021. This will be the first year that the two teams play more than twice. San Antonio also defeated Colorado in penalty kicks in Open Cup play in 2018. All time San Antonio is 4-3-3 in this series.
Season Series
5/1/21 @ SA W, 3-0
6/5/21 @ COL
7/17/21 @ COL
10/30/21 @SA
Last Time
These two regional rivals last met just one month ago in San Antonio. It was all SAFC on that night as Santiago Patiño scored a hat trick on his debut as SAFC cruised to a 3-0 opening night victory. Here are the match highlights:
IMAGES: SAN ANTONIO FC TWITTER, COLORADO SWITCHBACKS FC TWITTER