San Diego FC is a win away from advancing to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs, and it appears they’ll do it with star forward Hirving “Chuck” Lozano.
Lozano was in street clothes for SDFC’s opening win in the best-of-three series against the Portland Timbers last weekend, and hasn’t touched the pitch since he got into a dispute with Head Coach Mikey Varas win he was subbed out of an Oct. 4 match.
But as the team travels to Portland for a chance to punch its ticket to the Western Conference semifinals Saturday night, Varas said he expects Lozano to play.
“Based on everything that we’ve seen, he’ll be traveling to Portland and will be coming off the bench for us,” he said after a team training session Thursday.
“We already communicated to him before this game that as long as there is no setback this week that he will be back,” Varas said.
El Chucky, as his fans nicknamed him during his time playing in Liga MX, is the fifth-highest paid player in the league and has accounted for nine goals and seven assists over 27 matches this season. He apologized in an Instagram post before the first playoff match against Portland, but did not specify what was said at being subbed out.
“We think Hirving’s response has been really positive in training, he’s been working really hard and showing a lot of commitment to getting back into the team.,” said Varas.
SDFC dominated play against the Timbers in the first game of the series, but won by a closer-than-expected 2-1 margin for the first playoff win in franchise history.
The club finished as the top-seed in the Western Conference, earning home field advantage throughout the post-season, with a chance of hosting the MLS Cup championship if neither of the top two seeds emerge from the Eastern Conference playoffs.
If SDFC loses, they’ll play a series-deciding game three on Nov. 9 at Snapdragon Stadium. With a win, they’ll await the winner of the Seattle Sounders and Minnesota United series.
