Crew SC will be without left back Waylon Francis on Saturday when it kicks off against FC Dallas.

The club listed Francis, a 26-year-old defender from Costa Rica, as “out” for Saturday’s game after he left in the 33rd minute of the Crew’s 2-0 victory over the Los Angeles Galaxy on Wednesday with a left hamstring injury.

Francis underwent an MRI that revealed a “slight hamstring strain,” coach Gregg Berhalter said Thursday.

With Francis out of the lineup, Jukka Raitala is likely to start against FC Dallas.

Francis walked off the training pitch Thursday in running shoes. Berhalter said Francis did “regen,” or regeneration exercises, during training.

The injury came after Francis’ best two-game stretch of the season, in which he provided assists in back-to-back games.

Francis got off to a slow start in 2017 as he recovered from an October 2016 shoulder surgery. As he regained his form, Raitala took hold of the left back position for a long stretch. Through the Crew’s first 27 games, Francis has made just 10 starts.

Midfielders Niko Hansen (right thigh strain) and Artur (left thigh strain) and defender Harrison Afful (right foot sprain) were listed as questionable on the Crew’s Thursday injury report. Artur was a full practice participant Thursday after missing two straight games with hamstring tightness, Berhalter said.

Midfield connection

The Crew returned to a 4-2-3-1 formation Wednesday night against LA and could repeat the formation in the near future.

Berhalter was complimentary of the connection between central attacking midfielder Federico Higuain, who made his return from a knee injury Wednesday, and right wing Pedro Santos, who started his first game for the Crew after arriving from Portugal a little more than two weeks ago.

It would be highly unlikely for the pair to both be in the lineup in a 3-4-2-1 formation, meaning Berhalter might continue to use the 4-2-3-1 to showcase the Santos-Higuain connection if both are healthy and in good form moving forward.

“The whole vision, I mean bringing Pedro in, was to play with Federico. That was the whole idea,” Berhalter said. “When we thought about Ola (Kamara), Adam (Jahn), Kekuta (Manneh), Justin (Meram), Cristian (Martinez), Federico, Pedro, we think that’s a decent attacking group and the thought of them playing together was exciting to us, so we wanted to see it as soon as possible.”

Closing out

For the Crew to clinch a playoff spot in a strong Eastern Conference, it will likely need to win more than it loses in its final seven games.

In two of Berhalter’s first three seasons, the Crew did just that. Crew SC surged to a 5-1-1 finish in 2014 and a 4-3-0 finish in 2015 to qualify for the playoffs. Even in a poor 8-14-12 campaign in 2016, the Crew earned 37.5 percent of its wins for the season over a 3-3-1 finish.

“I don’t know. No idea,” Berhalter joked, asked about the team’s final stretches, before describing a building process that culminates in a better finish than start to the season.

“Obviously you want to build toward something. That’s important. The whole group is focused around trying to peak at the end of the year and that’s really important,” Berhalter said. “Who knows what’s going to happen this year. The idea is that you build, you build, you build so that when you get to the end, you’re strong.”

In those previous stretches of seven games to end the season, Crew SC played three at home in 2014 and 2015 and two at home in 2017. This season, Crew SC plays four of its final seven at home, but its final two on the road.

aerickson@dispatch.com

@AEricksonCD