Bruce Arena conceded that there was still plenty of work for his San Jose Earthquakes team to do despite sitting top of the Western Conference standings. 

Preston Judd cancelled out Daniel Salloi's second-minute opener to seal a 1-1 draw with Toronto FC last time out, but the Earthquakes were indebted to Reid Roberts late on. 

Toronto thought they had won it when Salloi dinked the ball over Luka Gavran four minutes from time, but Roberts was on hand to produce a miraculous goal-line clearance. 

It was a game that saw San Jose edge the expected goals (xG) battle with a total of 1.1 to Toronto's 0.8, though Arena was concerned about his team's overall play. 

"Yeah, we have a long way to go. We're not walking around thinking we're anything special – we know we have to keep improving every week," Arena said. 

"It's going to be challenging, and we just have to keep getting better. Like any team, there are egos in the group, but we didn't play well. 

"It's been tough, not perfect, but we managed to get a couple of results, and we'll leave it at that. Now we need to use the next week to recover and try to be better on Saturday." 

But perhaps the Earthquakes' biggest test of their title credentials comes this weekend, with second-placed Vancouver Whitecaps the visitors to PayPal Park. 

The two teams have already squared off this season, and the clash went in favour of the Earthquakes, who won 1-0 thanks to Beau Leroux's goal in first-half stoppage time.

Since that defeat, however, the Whitecaps have gone unbeaten in their last five MLS games (W4 D1), and are now within just three points of their opponents. 

That draw came in their last league game as Mathias Laborda's 81st-minute equaliser sealed a share of the spoils against the LA Galaxy, though boss Jesper Sorensen said his team could have done more to win. 

"I think we tried to push the pace up in the game, pressing high and wanting to get forward," he said. "We played our style of football, which we want to do home and away. 

"Against the ball, I think we played very well, and we didn't give too much away. Then we gave up a goal at the beginning of the second half that gave them some momentum. 

"We knew that we would probably be able to take over the longer the game went on. I was not happy with the way we played with the ball in the first half; we were too stressed and tried to play too many long passes."

PLAYERS TO WATCH

SJ Earthquakes – Preston Judd

Judd has found the golden touch on home turf, netting five of his seven league goals at PayPal Park in 2026.

His five goals are the most through San Jose's first five home games of a season since Chris Wondolowski tallied six goals through the first five home games of 2012.

Vancouver – Sebastian Berhalter

Berhalter recorded his 18th assist since the start of last season, setting up Vancouver's only goal on Saturday.

Only San Diego FC's Anders Dreyer (24), Inter Miami's Lionel Messi (22) and Chicago Fire's Philip Zinckernagel (19) have more assists during that span. 

MATCH PREDICTION: DRAW

San Jose shut out Vancouver on March 21 in a 1-0 win, and are the only team to hold the Whitecaps scoreless in a league match this season. The last time Vancouver was shut out twice by the same team in a single regular season was by the Houston Dynamo in 2021.

But the Earthquakes are in top form. They have a club-record 28 points through their first 11 regular-season matches. The only MLS teams with more points at this stage of a season were the Galaxy in 1996 and 2010 and Sporting Kansas City in 2000 (29 points each).

Vancouver have, however, outscored opponents in league play by 20 goals so far this season (26-6). The plus-20 goal differential is the largest through 10 matches of a season in MLS history, while the 26 goals are tied for the most at this point of a season (1998 LA Galaxy).

OPTA WIN PROBABILITY

SJ Earthquakes – 38.8%

Draw – 26.5%

Vancouver – 34.7%