2025 Season Previews: San Diego FC, San Jose Earthquakes, Toronto FC
/Stay Classy, San Diego. San Diego 2025
Previewing a team who has never played a competitive soccer game is always a difficult task. How are they going to play? How do the pieces fit together? Are the pieces good? Luckily in the case of San Diego FC, we have at least some thinking behind things.
The expansion side appointed Tyler Heaps as Sporting Director and General Manager, instantly vaulting them to Tier 0: Nerd Boss, in ASA’s annual analytics tier list. Heaps was previously the head of recruitment for Right to Dream (the multi-club partnership behind San Diego FC, and Nordsjaelland), and before that he lead analytics and analysis departments at AS Monaco and US Soccer. He is the definition of a Nerd Boss tier.
Those finger prints are pretty resoundingly found across the roster construction so far.
“Brian, I’m gonna be honest with you, that smells like pure gasoline”
The most obvious place to start with this team is the absolute gasoline that is their winger position. Their marquee designated player signing was Mexican international Hirving Chucky Lozano. I am generally opposed to transfers that have some obvious tie-in directed at ticket sales, but Lozano is good and likely not so expensive that he’s an anchor if he becomes not good. FBRef recently cleansed the site of advanced data for non top five leagues, but his Serie A data for Napoli was consistently north of 0.5 xG+xA per game, and his McLachbot profile for the 23/24 season at PSV was a banger. If you want cause for concern, Lozano missed most of the fall with a muscle injury for PSV, but who knows if they looked at a guy moving January 1 and decided to take it easy.
On the other side of the pitch, San Diego signed soon-to-be 27 year old do it all attacker Anders Dreyer from Anderlecht. Dreyer has played almost exclusively at right winger, but has quite a varied stat profile. He’s not a dribble winger, he’s a pass and shoot winger. His xG/shot has dropped off quite a bit in 2024 compared to his 15 goal 2023 season, but I’d expect him to crash the box a lot.
This presumably leaves the 9 slot open for Nordsjaelland transferee Marcus Ingvartsen as the first choice striker, with Tomas Angel as his back up. That feels a little light weight to me, San Diego have lots of roster mechanisms and allocation cash to make something happen here if they so choose.
“I'm Luca de la Torre. People seem to like me because I am polite, and I'm rarely late.”
I’m particularly intrigued by what this team is doing in midfield. Luca de la Torre on loan from Celta Vigo comes in as maybe the most name recognition signing. His stat profile in Spain is a guy who gets into the box at a decent rate, but doesn’t really generate a lot with it, and doesn’t move it forward. His time in the Netherlands, a league much closer to MLS in terms of quality, was a much more progressive midfielder, with very very very little ball winning. I suspect a lot of the forward passing will stick in MLS.
Aside from him, Anibal Godoy joins from Nashville, they snipped Heine Bruseth from Orlando (who spent 2024 in Norway being particularly unremarkable), drafted Manu Duah first overall, signed long time Danish league midfielder Jeppe Tverskov and picked Jasper Loffelsend in the expansion draft. None of these players are bad per se, but they’re all just so deeply whatever. Not needle movers in any way, but probably won’t cost them games either.
What perhaps gives me more pause is the lack of shot creation. Tverskov, de la Torre, Godoy, Duah, Loffelsend, Heine Bruseth, and Valakari average a combined 0.43 xA per 90 over their careers, and that’s seven dudes. You can only play three. For comparison, Evander put up 0.41 xA per 90 on his own. If the whole shot creation load falls on Dreyer and Lozano, I think that’s really hard.
“Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.”
If there is a position that really makes me squint it’s at goalkeeper. San Diego are running a goalkeeper corps of Pablo Sisniega, CJ dos Santos, and Jacob Jackson. Sisniega conceded 28 goals from 27 xG in USL last season with San Antonio, and 47 goals from 41 xG in his 3000 career MLS minutes. This guy just isn’t good. Jacob Jackson and CJ dos Santos have virtually no MLS track record (13 goals conceded from 9 xG for Jackson and 5 goals conceded from 4 xG for dos Santos). However, at the Next Pro level we do have some sample. CJ dos Santos conceded 55 goals from 53 xG, entirely unremarkable, but Jacob Jackson has the second best G/xG ratio at 0.83 of any goalkeeper to ever play in MLS Next Pro.
If you made me bet now, Sisniega gets the gig to start and loses it to Jacob Jackson before the end of the season.
"I love scotch. Scotchy scotch scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly"
The club hired Mikey Varas, long time USSF assistant and youth coach, as the club’s first head coach. So little translates from youth football and assistant jobs to head coaching, we basically know nothing about this hire. At the time of writing they’ve played three friendlies, a match against Phoenix Rising they maybe won 2-1 based on social media clips, and against Sacramento Republic they maybe won 3-0 via the same reasoning. Who am I to know? The one game we do have film vs NYCFC they lost 3-1, which I think flattered them. They scored a really nice set piece goal, which is always low hanging fruit to make yourself competitive, but also had some brutal turnovers in the build. If they’re going to be dogmatic about playing out, I think they’re probably not going to have a good time.
Purely based on the roster, I would not be getting my hopes massively up. Maybe there is a huge signing coming later, they’ve flirted with Kevin de Bruyne, but this is an at best deeply mid roster. I can see a world where they choose defensive solidity and transition play and sneak in as a play-in team, but if I were a San Diego fan I’d want some more additions from here, otherwise you might need some scotchy scotch scotch.
Only Place To Go Is Up? San Jose Earthquakes 2025
In 2024 the San Jose Earthquakes celebrated their 50th anniversary and in honor of their early history, they folded like the NASL. The team started the season under returning Coach Luchi Gonzalez by losing eight of their first nine games. They went on to set records in defensive futility by allowing 78 goals and losing 25 of their 34 games. By the end of the season the Quakes had locked up their fifth Anthony Precourt Memorial Wooden Spoon with a franchise-tying low of 21 points and moved on from the Luchi era.
To move the team out of the basement, owner Jon Fisher brought in the MLS and USMNT tested Bruce Arena. Much like his last reclamation project, the New England Revolution, Arena arrived to a team that was significantly underperforming their underlying metrics. The Quakes allowed nearly 20 more goals than their 58 expected goals allowed, leading to them picking up only 21 Pts from 38 xPts. Simply performing at their expected levels would have had the team as the third most likely team to “win” the Wooden Spoon, rather than locking it up with three games to spare.
Goalkeeper Was A Capital P Problem
To bring this team up to a level of respectability, the first area of concern is Goalkeeper performance. The biggest level of underperformance for the 2024 Quakes was in goal. Across three GKs the Quakes shipped 78 G against 60.07 post shot xG. Most of that came from the calamitous play of William Yarbrough (-0.45 goals added per ‘96) who is no longer with the team. The Quakes will be hoping for regular GK Daniel to return to his top shot stopping ways that saw him put up the best per 96’ numbers (+0.31 goals saved) of the 2023 season.
Bruce Magic
Even league average Goalkeeping would have had the Quakes shipping around 60 goals for the season which would have had them rooted near the bottom, rather than dead last. To move the Quakes back to their lofty heights of backing into the playoffs in 9th place in the Western Conference, Arena will need to work his usual magic on defensive organization seen at his previous stops. For both home and away games the New England Revolution saw their xGA go down by around 0.5 per game after Arena took over in 2019, compared to the 2018 season. Even without taking into account the phenomenal goalkeeping the Revs received during his tenure, from Matt Turner and Djordje Petrovic, Arena’s defensive structure had them giving up only 1 xGA per home game and 1.6 xGA per away game. League average shot stopping would translate to around 44 xGA for the season, which is amongst the five best defenses of the 2024 season.
To accomplish this defensive transformation Arena has made a few key personnel changes. Gone is the worst performing DP in the league, DM Carlos Gruezo was bought out and returned to his native Ecuador. In his place, Arena raided his former team for two midfielders familiar with his style of play. Most likely to take the place of Gruezo in shielding the back line is Canadian international Mark-Anthony Kaye. While Kaye isn’t a top DM in the league he represents an upgrade over the production that the Quakes received from Gruezo.
Other former New England Revolution stalwarts under Arena that were added are former Quakes Homegrown RB Nick Lima and CB Dave Romney. These players are meant to bolster the backline and bring familiarity with Arena’s approach to defensive structure. The Quakes have also kept starting CBs Rodrigues and Bruno Wilson with backup Daniel Munie joining them. During the MLS Superdraft, Arena added even more to the backline with the top two rated college CBs in Max Floriani and Reid Roberts. Paul Harvey’s excellent NCAA draft data big board tags them as “elbow” defenders, capable of sliding in and out of fullback and wide centerback roles. With those profiles, and running six deep at the position, the Quakes are likely to run a back three in 2025. Initial viewing of the Quakes first two preseason games at the Coachella Valley Invitational bear that out.
These personnel changes haven’t been strictly in the defensive end of the field either. The Quakes made a shock move for Chicho Arango, trading $1.4M in funny money to Real Salt Lake for the down ballot MVP Striker. With the exit of Jeremy Ebobisse the team was in need of an attacker to lead the line, so they went out and acquired one of the best in the league. To back him up they signed former MVP, and talisman of MLS Cup winning Atlanta, Josef Martinez. Though he has regressed from his heights with Atlanta following ACL surgery in 2020, he was still worth 11 goals across 23 appearances (13 starts). With the return of top chance creator RW Cristian Espinoza and AM Hernan Lopez this gives the Quakes at least a chance at a top quality attacking line.
With all these improvements to frontline and backline the only question becomes, how does this all connect? While they moved DM from a net negative to close to league average, there are still serious missing pieces. Team passing metronome Jackson Yueill departed in free agency to the New England Revolution (looks like traffic can go both ways here). To replace him is 19yo homegrown Midfielder Niko Tsakiris, who profiles more as a ball carrier than a ball passer and still hasn’t developed into a full time starter. The aforementioned switch from the 4-2-3-1 formation in 2024 to the 3-5-2 that has been seen so far in pre-season is most likely to account for this thin area. It provides defensive solidity from three CBs at the back, an improved DM for cover, and wingbacks to assist in midfield duties connecting to the attacking line. Though it must be said, star attacker Cristian Espinoza is perhaps an awkward fit for a 3-5-2 as a traditional winger.
The addition of San Diego to the Western Conference means that it will match the Eastern Conference in teams and provide a more balanced schedule of Home - Home within Conference. Last season in the Eastern Conference it took 40 points to get into the play-in game for the playoffs, while in the Western Conference it took 47. For the Quakes to show the type of turn around that is expected with the arrival of Arena that would mean getting an additional 19 to 26 points. Even if you went by expected points the Quakes would need three to 10 more points, and that’s to move from dead last to 9th in the Conference. Arena seems to have the pieces together to reduce goals allowed through improved Goalkeeping and defensive solidity plus an attack that can score goals. All they have to do now is go out and show they can do it.
Drone or Drown: Toronto FC 2025
Herdman and his league of extraordinary spies are gone, Robin Fraser is back and hopefully bringing the mojo of the wildly more successful Vanney years back to Canada. I say hopefully, because it requires a tremendous amount of hope. This roster isn’t good, the ability to add talent isn’t good, sigh. Let’s get this over with, shall we?
Excuse the tiny screenshot, it’s too big, but here is Toronto FC’s cap situation as of Superbowl Sunday. They have to go the 3 DP route, for salary cap reasons that are somewhat unclear to me. They have something like $3M in wiggle room if they spend the entirety of their GAM TAM thank you ma’am warchest right now. So in reality, they have zero wiggle room. After the addition of Theo Corbeanu, who makes something like $500k per year at Granada, you just have zero ability to add talent. The team is the team.
Jason Hernandez spoke about two to three potential additions coming shortly, I would expect one those to be discarded Rapids veteran Jack Price who has been on trial with the club. He both fills a need, literally anyone who can pass forward, will be cheap, and is a known commodity to Robin Fraser. He also looked surprisingly not cooked physically in a tune up friendly in Marbella vs the mighty Fredrikstad.
The team is the team
Is that team any good? No. Not even a little bit. TFC ran a -10 xGD, good for third bottom in the East in 2024. They were an about league average defensive team, but the cost of doing that was extremely conservative back five’s with very few numbers committed forward and the second lowest xG for in the entire league. On paper, some of these teams looked aggressive. Federico Bernardeschi shined as a wingback (so much so that he would have made our g+ best 11 nomination if he was nominated at FB and not as a forward) and Tyrese Spicer offered some pop before getting injured. But it always played extremely, extremely, extremely conservatively.
Part of that is health, part of that is talent. Even the most healthy and available good player in Bernardeschi only played 27 90’s (missing the other 7 almost certainly from suspensions). But worst contract in the entire league Lorenzo Insigne only played 15 90’s, put up four goals and five assists with worse expected numbers, and calling what he did without the ball “defending” is offensive to defenders everywhere. Laryea only played 10 90’s, Coello missed most of the season, there is perhaps a case to be made that with better health alone this team will be better.
In’s and Out’s
Top scorer Prince Owusu departed for Montreal, while Brandon Servania’s very large cap hit came off the books as he heads to DC United. So too departs center back Shane O’Neill, third choice goalkeeper Greg Ranjitsingh, and supplemental roster players Aime Mabika and Luke Singh. The only inbound move of note thus far is the arrival of Theo Corbeanu on loan from Granada. Corbeanu famously rejected a TFC2 contract once upon a time before departing for Wolverhampton Wanderers, and then bouncing around clubs a lot. Corbeanu has 17 goals and assists in 45 90’s across English lower leagues, Bundesliga 2, La Liga, and Liga 2. A one in three guy at a 500k cap hit (his wages in Spain according to FBref’s capology) feels like not awful value? But probably not good.
Corbeanu is a pretty active dribbler, and his physical profile gives decent potential to be an impactful defender as well as box arriver, though he’s never been particularly adept at either. He can play either side, Fraser has hinted he can maybe play up front, I don’t agree with that. It seems Jason Hernandez doesn’t either, as it was reported Toronto FC tried to sign Uzbek striker Eldor Shumorodov from Roma. I’m starting to think all these scouting trips to Italy have another purpose. This is the spot I’d pay most close attention to, whether that’s a U-22 or otherwise.
2025 Outlook
I mean, it’s just bad right? Let me play the optimist: Robin Fraser took over a Colorado team that was way short of the playoffs, won five of his seven matches with a +4 xGD (they were -10 xGD in the other 27 matches), got them into the playoffs as a +2 xGD team in 2020, before coming 2nd in the West in 2021. That’s a real turn around, maybe he can make magic here.
The pessimist says: that team was young to peak aged, played zero players over 30, and added a tonne of talent in guys like Auston Trusty, Diego Rubio, and Jonathan Lewis (love him or hate him, the dude scores goals when he plays) plus the emergence of academy players like Cole Bassett and Sam Vines. Toronto don’t have that. Their five best players are 35, 33, 32, 31, and 30. They have two players younger than 23 who contribute anything of note to the roster, and only six under 25. It’s just real hard to make that work. My prognosis? Sell the older players, tear it down to the studs, full rebuild. Start over. Pray for the sweet sweet embrace of the spoon.