{"id":283165,"date":"2025-11-10T12:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283165\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T12:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:15:07","slug":"anders-dreyer-sends-san-diego-into-conference-semis-hes-amazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283165\/","title":{"rendered":"Anders Dreyer sends San Diego into Conference Semis: &#8220;He\u2019s amazing&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With their backs against the wall, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/san-diego-fc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">San Diego FC<\/a> produced one of their best performances of the season.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/anders-dreyer\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anders Dreyer<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/amahl-pellegrino\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Amahl Pellegrino<\/a> ensured that in Sunday&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/mls-cup-playoffs\/2025\/matches\/sdvspor-11-09-2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">4-0 rout<\/a> of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/portland-timbers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Portland Timbers<\/a>, netting braces to decide Game 3 in their Round One Best-of-3 Series.<\/p>\n<p>The victory books a Western Conference Semifinal matchup with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/minnesota-united-fc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Minnesota United FC<\/a> on Nov. 24 (10 pm ET | <a href=\"https:\/\/tv.apple.com\/us\/channel\/mls-season-pass\/tvs.sbd.7000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MLS Season Pass, Apple TV<\/a>), keeping the expansion club&#8217;s Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs dream alive.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The key is always the players,&#8221; head coach Mikey Varas told Apple TV post-game.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These guys are giants and they\u2019ve worked so hard. They started in a clean slate, all meeting each other for the first time 11 months ago. And the work that they\u2019ve done and the sacrifices that they\u2019ve made, 11 months later to put a performance like this in front of their home crowd.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But we\u2019re hungry for more. This is just one step.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n      Dreyer delivers<\/p>\n<p>Dreyer showed that hunger from the get-go, scoring inside five minutes off <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/onni-valakari\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Onni Valakari<\/a>&#8216;s cross and then icing the match with a 79th-minute finish from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/hirving-lozano\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chucky Lozano<\/a>&#8216;s assist.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/san-diego-fc-s-anders-dreyer-named-2025-mls-newcomer-of-the-year\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2025 MLS Newcomer of the Year<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/2025-mls-best-xi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Best XI<\/a> honoree ended the series with 3g\/2a, continuing his splendid form from the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s been crazy,&#8221; Dreyer told Apple TV. &#8220;I enjoy playing football at the moment. Life is good outside the pitch and for me that\u2019s so important. Wife and kid are happy and when they\u2019re happy, it\u2019s easy to perform on the pitch and with teammates like I have here. It&#8217;s incredible. I love my teammates.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Added Varas: &#8220;He\u2019s amazing. Just an amazing player, an amazing human being and we\u2019re just so happy he\u2019s on our team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n      Home support<\/p>\n<p>San Diego&#8217;s dominant performance came before a sold-out crowd of 32,500 at Snapdragon Stadium, guaranteeing their supporters will experience at least one more home match this year.<\/p>\n<p>Dreyer&#8217;s eager to anticipate that raucous environment, upon his return from World Cup qualifiers with Denmark during the upcoming November international window.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know they will be back and I know there will be 30,000, 35,000 people cheering for us, and that\u2019s just amazing,&#8221; said Dreyer. &#8220;That\u2019s something unique and hopefully we take a win there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After setting expansion-club records for points (63) and wins (19), the newcomers are now three victories away from becoming MLS Cup presented by Audi champions on Dec. 6.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You\u2019ve got to celebrate the small victories,&#8221; Varas said. &#8220;You cannot take for granted what you do when you win playoff games and playoff series, and then we\u2019ll wake up tomorrow and we\u2019ll be 100 percent focused on [Minnesota].&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their backs against the wall, San Diego FC produced one of their best performances of the season.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[6864,130554,30071,149668,6868,403,99],"class_list":["post-283165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-match-reaction","tag-mls-cup-playoffs","tag-san-diego-fc","tag-sdvspor-11-09-2025","tag-sendtonews","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}