This season has been a phenomenal start for Mikey Varas and the San Diego FC – who have only lost once in the season and is one of the top teams in the blazing Western Conference, which says a lot about the expectations for the club. But on top of all that, Varas is earning buzz for his coaching schemes – tied to the recent success of the team so far.

Varas, who formerly served as an assistant in the USMNT and FC Dallas, is scoring big wins and getting impressive returns with his club early in the season. Being the head coach of an expansion team comes with a lot of big expectations, and it is also rare for a new team to be one of the contender teams right off the bat.

Thanks to those points, Varas is starting to stir up COTY talks between analysts, experts, and even fellow coaches. At this point, one can say that there’s indeed more to expect from Varas and San Diego moving forward, considering that it is just seven games into the campaign. But the hype is there – and it remains real at this point.

Shattering Expectations

If you told a San Diego fan that they would be one of the top teams in the Western Conference to begin their first seven games of the season, no one would even blink an eye. The preseason expectations were quite low for the team – as with any other expansion club that has come and joined the MLS since then. And yet, Varas is coaching them well that they are finding ways to win big against tough opponents.

To begin its season, Varas and San Diego cruised past four of the last five champions in the league. They defeated LA Galaxy in a 2-0 clean sheet for their season debut, and they even wrought havoc in a massive clash with LAFC for a 3-2 win. The latest? A 3-0 clean sheet once more, this time against the Seattle Sounders.

But for Varas, this is just them scratching the surface – the tip of the iceberg.

“The fact of the matter is, we're not even close to as good as we can be, because I don't think we've put together more than 50 minutes, 55 minutes of our complete highest level without a bit of a drop,” said head coach Mikey Varas. “When we get there, I think we're going to be quite a special team.”

Impressing Expansion

If we are going to look at all the expansion teams – San Diego is not doing something that an expansion team should do. They are sitting second in the Western Conference and currently boast the fourth-best record in the league in just seven games. This group has just been together for about two months and a half, and yet they are playing so well that you would not think of them as an expansion team to begin with.

Expansion teams haven’t really done well in their inaugural season. Since 1969 across the big four leagues, a total of 37 expansion teams have ended up as cannon fodder for established teams – finishing with a losing record, save for the Vegas Golden Knights – who managed to steer its path to winning the NHL’s Western Conference and pushing to the Stanley Cup Final.

Who knows, maybe San Diego can also impress in its first season as an expansion team – make it to the playoffs, and score a trip to the final. Should that happen – expect Varas to get the credit he’s due as one of the best coaches in the game.