Milan Iloski completes insane 7-goal, 93-minute stretch for San Diego FC | OneFootball

Perhaps San Diego FC's vacancy at center forward has been exaggerated.

In a season where San Diego has tried several different approaches to the center forward role, that's where Milan Iloski began his first MLS start with the expansion club on Wednesday night. And the result was the final four goals in what has to be one of the all-time great scoring runs in MLS history.

Iloski scored in the 35th, 37th, 44th and 47th minutes as San Diego thumped an admittedly short-handed Vancouver Whitecaps squad to become the 20th player to score four times in an MLS match and the third this year. But that only told part of the story.

Iloski also had a brace in his last appearance as a halftime substitute in SDFC's 4-2 win at Minnesota United. The match before that, he came on very late and contributed an insurance tally in a 2-0 home victory over Austin FC.

That means from a statistical standpoint when Iloski finished off a third assist of the night from Anders Dreyer to make it 4-1, it was his seventh goal in just 93 minutes played, a truly insane total that made you wonder, at least for a moment, if it was all just part of some modern Twilight Zone adaptation where we've woken up living in someone's EA Sports FC career mode.

Iloski now has nine total MLS goals for manager Mikey Varas and has to have earned at least a couple more starts.

Iloski's last 7 goals

What goes up ...

Of course, it's a pretty safe bet the former USL Championship and Danish Superliga attacker won't keep producing quite at this level. While you never like to make absolute pronouncements about the future, the numbers are just silly.

He's the extremely rare player who had a strong conversion rate as a late-game sub, then actually raised his goals per/90 minutes when given the chance to play a full half or more.

He's now at 2.62 goals per 90 minutes. Lionel Messi, at the absolute peak of his career as the world's greatest living player, averaged 1.56 goals per 90 in his age-25 season for FC Barcelona.

So yeah, not sustainable.

But Iloski is still just 25. And center forward is a position where players bloom later than, for example, creative attacking midfielder. Just go back and look at the career arcs of guys like Brian McBride, Chris Wondolowski and Brian White. So don't be surprised if this extremely outburst is the beginning of something steadier and more extended.