San Jose Earthquakes came from nowhere to stun San Diego 3-2 in a match that bore no resemblance to what our model had lined up. The visitors lit up the scoreboard early and often, with Tsakiris opening the account in the third minute after Leroux's assist, then adding a penalty eight minutes later. Judd made it 3-0 before the quarter-hour was done, assisted by Tsakiris, and Bouda piled on a fourth in the 35th minute off another Tsakiris assist. San Diego finally got on the board when Dreyer scored in the 42nd minute thanks to Valakari's help, but by then the damage was substantial. Bakambu grabbed a late penalty in the 90+4th to make it 3-2, though San Jose had already seen out the job despite Floriani's red card in stoppage time. A red card for San Diego's dos Santos in the 80th had also shifted the momentum, but honestly, the Earthquakes were already cruising.

Our model's most likely outcome at kickoff was a 49% lean towards San Diego, with a predicted scoreline of 2-1. That didn't pan out — we got both the result direction and the exact score wrong. We'd flagged San Diego's strong home form and San Jose's poor away record as key factors, and those looked set to hold sway. Instead, San Jose's apparent desperation to chase a European berth overrode the statistical book, and they delivered a clinic on the road. The early onslaught caught San Diego cold, and even when they pulled goals back late on, the visitors were never really troubled. When the model got it wrong, it got it genuinely wrong — but that's football for you.