SAN ANTONIO – An entire season's worth of victories, comebacks, brilliant individual performances, coming-of-age storylines and tough losses all boil down to two games. Those two games -- one on the road and one at home -- and one point currently separate San Antonio FC from a berth in the USL Championship playoffs.
After an underwhelming result in Las Vegas last Saturday, the Alamo City Club, which now sits in 11th in the Western Conference standings, has lost the ability to control its own fate.
Recommended Videos
"I think you've just got to move on. Obviously we're majorly disappointed," said midfielder Jack Barmby. "It's one of those things where if it goes our way, and we win the game, we would have more control, but a lot of it is out of our hands right now. The only thing we've got to focus on is Friday night."
"Our task is to make sure that we put ourselves in the best possible chance to get into the playoffs," said head coach Darren Powell. "If we get the two wins, I think we're going to be in a very strong spot to make the playoffs, so that needs to be the focus this week."
The first step on that journey will likely be the hardest. San Antonio travels to the west coast to face Portland Timbers 2 in the first of back-to-back, must-win games this Friday, and considering SAFC's road record of 2-3-11, the pressure is on to break that trend sooner rather than later.
"It's basically two cup finals for us," Barmby said. "Anything but a win is probably not good enough. It's basically a cup final for us, so we've got to learn from the mistakes from previous games. If we're scoring goals, we're most likely going to win the game, but we've got to show up sharp at the other end and not concede goals."
"Whenever you play any of the MLS 2 teams, it's always hard to predict what starting lineup they're going to have," Powell said. "They've been fairly consistent recently, so the bottom line is we need to look for the right spaces to exploit, execute our chances when we get them and defend well on the other side of the ball."
San Antonio will take on Portland at Providence Park Saturday at 9 p.m.