San Diego Sockers Match Preview at Baltimore
Published on January 8, 2026 under Major Arena Soccer League (MASL)
San Diego Sockers News Release
OCEANSIDE, CA - The San Diego Sockers--presented by Kaiser Permanente-- continue their longest road trip of the 2025-26 Major Arena Soccer League season with a weekend back- to-back on the East Coast, taking on the Baltimore Blast on Saturday from Towson University's SECU Arena, and Sunday battling Utica City FC in upstate New York. Saturday's 3pm PST kickoff from Towson will be aired on MASL TV on YouTube, as well as supplemental coverage on the National Soccer Network and Victory+, and international coverage on Sportworld and the Unbeaten Network.
The Sockers (3-2-1, 10 points) find themselves in fifth place in the MASL eight-team standings table, tied with St. Louis and three points behind second-place Milwaukee. An uneven start to the season has most MASL squads on different totals of games played; San Diego has a game in hand over Baltimore and Milwaukee, and four games in hand compared to first-place Kansas City (18 points, 10 matches played). The club rebounded from an 0-1-1 start to win three in a row, before dropping a travel-influenced 5-4 decision to Tacoma on Sunday. While San Diego has played four home matches to two away, those numbers will change dramatically in the month of January, as San Diego spends four straight weekends on the road during a six-match road trip.
Last week, San Diego's degree of difficulty ramped up with three matches in six days, including a travel back-to-back on Saturday between Oceanside and Tacoma. Somewhat predictably, the veteran Sockers performed their best at their freshest. On Tuesday, the club shut out the Tacoma Stars 8-0 in front of a crowd of over 3,000 at Oceanside's Frontwave Arena. Boris Pardo stopped all ten shots he faced for his first career regular-season shutout, and the third in modern Sockers history. Sebastian Mendez and Charlie Gonzalez each scored hat tricks in the emphatic win. On Saturday, San Diego beat Empire 4-3 in a close contest, with team captain Kraig Chiles delivering the game-winning goal in the fourth quarter. On Sunday, a tired Sockers team arrived in Washington state less than five hours before their game, and dropped a 5-4 decision to Tacoma. Luiz Morales netted two goals in the loss for San Diego.
Saturday will be the first of three meetings between the Sockers and Blast this season, their most in five decades. San Diego will travel back to Baltimore later in the month for a second contest on January 24.
Baltimore will fly to San Diego for a match at Frontwave Arena on March 8. Fierce rivals dating back to the heyday of indoor soccer in the 1980s, the Sockers and Baltimore Blast have been league-mates in the MASL since 2014, but rarely have faced one another in active play. Over the eleven previous seasons, San Diego only faced the Blast six times, posting a 4-2 record, including a 2-1 mark on Baltimore's reduced-size field at SECU Arena. The clubs did meet in the 2025 Ron Newman Cup Playoffs for a single match in San Diego, which the Sockers won 11-3. The all-time series dating back to the MISL sees San Diego with a 31-25 mark against Baltimore.
Major Arena Soccer League Stories from January 8, 2026
- San Diego Sockers Match Preview at Baltimore - San Diego Sockers
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