Tsakiris' goal and two assists end Earthquakes' eight-match skid at San Diego

SAN DIEGO - Niko Tsakiris had a goal and two assists before halftime, and the San Jose Earthquakes finally remembered how to win.

San Jose beat San Diego FC 3-2 on Wednesday night at Snapdragon Stadium, ending an eight-match winless streak and improving to 11-8-5. San Diego fell to 8-10-6. The Associated Press framed Tsakiris' first-half haul as the difference; the club recap filled in the sequences that produced it.

Three minutes in, Tsakiris finished after a long ball from Beau Leroux, curling a left-footed shot past CJ dos Santos. The AP credited assists on the opener to Leroux and Luka Jovanovic. An early Earthquakes penalty followed and was saved by dos Santos in the eighth minute per the AP wire (the club's timeline placed the award and save closer to the fifth).

San Jose wasted a chance to go two up and still left the half with a three-goal cushion built on Tsakiris' distribution.

Judd, Bouda, and the half that held

Tsakiris set up Preston Judd in the 12th minute for Judd's career-high 12th goal of the season. Judd left around the half-hour mark with an injury; Ousseni Bouda replaced him and scored in the 35th with a career-best sixth goal, again from a Tsakiris assist. By the break San Jose led 3-0 on the strength of one player's involvement in every goal.

San Diego clawed back before halftime when a ball bounced in off Onni Valakari in the 42nd minute, an own-goal deflection the club described as ricocheting into the net. The deficit was 3-1 at the interval, not 3-0, which mattered once the second half turned chaotic.

Dos Santos was sent off in the 81st minute. Cedric Bakambu converted a penalty in the 94th to make it 3-2, but San Jose held on. The missed early penalty that dos Santos saved never became the story of a collapse; Tsakiris' three-goal involvement had already built enough margin that a late red card and a stoppage-time spot kick could not erase the night.

What the skid break changes

An eight-match winless run ends only once. Doing it on the road, with a midfielder producing a goal and two assists inside 35 minutes, gives San Jose a different September math: 11-8-5 is a playoff-relevant ledger again, and Snapdragon is no longer a place where the Quakes merely survived.

The resilience after the saved penalty is the quieter half of the same night. Plenty of sides that have gone eight without a win treat an early miss as confirmation. San Jose treated it as a delay. Judd's 12th and Bouda's sixth arrived anyway, both with Tsakiris on the assist column, and the late Bakambu penalty became a footnote instead of a collapse.

MLS's match center and the Earthquakes' recap agree on the 3-2 final and on Tsakiris as the engine of the first half. San Jose absorbed a saved penalty, an own-goal concession, a red card against the home keeper, and a 94th-minute penalty, and still left Southern California with three points.

Next comes the chance to stack a second win before the skid's memory returns. Tsakiris, already decisive by the half-hour mark Wednesday, set the standard for how San Jose wants those nights to start.

Sources

https://www.sjearthquakes.com/news/match-recap-earthquakes-3-san-diego-fc-2

https://abcnews.com/Sports/wireStory/niko-tsakiris-goal-2-assists-lead-earthquakes-3-136326777

https://www.mlssoccer.com/competitions/mls-regular-season/2026/matches/sdvssj-09-09-2026/