“Bienvenidos,” said Hirving “Chucky” Lozano.

A recording from the Mexico City native and international football standout greeted fans of San Diego FC Monday night.

That’s been true at home games since March, when the first-year Major League Soccer club first played in Mission Valley.

Monday’s event: SDFC’s second-round playoff game, against Minnesota United.

And what an event it was. SDFC’s Anders Dreyer scored in the 72nd minute as the expansion team defeated Minnesota United 1-0 in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference semifinals.

As for Lozano himself? He was on the bench until the 78th minute, when he entered to loud cheers.

There, the former World Cup goal-scorer and European leagues veteran spent far more time than San Diego FC’s leaders and fans would’ve expected after the team made Lozano its highest-paid player and featured him in its marketing campaign.

Two hamstring injuries set him back this season, not a surprise, given Lozano’s injury history and that he was pushing 30, but a rare challenge nonetheless.

What couldn’t have been forecast was that Lozano would lose his starting job late in the season for his actions off the field.

Because of his tirade after he was benched at halftime in the season’s second-to-last game, he was held out of the finale and the club’s playoff opener.

Lozano responded well. He apologized, earned his reinstatement and played well as a second-half substitute in the first round’s final two games.

But, not to pick on Lozano, there’s a bigger story here that must be appreciated.

Here, Monday night, was SDFC, playing as the top seed of 15-team Western Conference and vying for a spot in the 30-team league’s final four clubs.

Here was a noisy crowd of 32,500, making it three home sellouts in three playoff games.

Instead of SDFC faltering after the Lozano incident, it maintained a good level of soccer and success.

Heck, short-term, it may have improved.

By no means was Lozano easy to replace. His eight assists in 27 games trailed only Dreyer for team honors, and his nine goals stood third, behind Dreyer and June sensation Milan Iloski.

But SDFC found an apt left wing in Amahl Pellegrino, obtained in August.

He scored three goals in the three-game playoff series win over the Portland Timbers. Monday marked his fifth consecutive start. In MLS terms, he’s a modestly salaried player. And he’s 35.

Pellegrino did flub a point-blank try Monday, keeping the match scoreless in the 54th minute.

But there was a bigger victory to SDFC’s performance — on and off the field – after things got sideways with its star left wing.

The decision to hold Lozano out of the next two games was made by a whole bunch of people – sporting director Tyler Heaps, coach Mikey Varas, team ownership, CEO Tom Penn and, crucially, a five-player leadership committee headed by captain Jeppe Tverskov.

The process and the results, then,  reinforced that SDFC is devoted to and informed by team-first principles.

“It was a group decision,” Heaps said. “We have to protect our environment first and foremost.”

He added: “We had to protect the culture and ensure that the values we instill day to day are ones that the owners are proud of, because they are the ones that have paid this massive expansion fee to give here. Hirving’s understood that what he has done is not acceptable and we are a bit of a different club than everybody else in the world and we’re somebody that really prides ourselves on values and we do things, in our opinion, different than a lot of football clubs do.”

Sizing up the fallout further, Heaps saw another dividend.

“It’s also it’s also, kind of lit a spark under everybody else. To realize that, OK, this is a collective and everybody’s in this together, and this club is willing to go on without anybody. We are going to do things collectively, and we’re not going to compromise our values for anything or anyone.”

Who saw all of this coming? Nobody.