Category: MLS

By Ben Leonard

photo by sjearthquakes.com: The Quakes take a tough loss in Chicago to the Fire 1-0

With five defenders injured, the San Jose Earthquakes (5-5-7) fell to the Chicago Fire (3-5-7) 1-0 on a goal by Joao Meira in the 38th minute. Even with the win on Friday, Chicago remained in the Eastern Conference’s cellar.

“We didn’t play good, simple as that,” Earthquakes coach Dominic Kinnear said Friday. “We just kept giving the ball away; it wasn’t like we were under a tremendous amount of pressure. We just didn’t play good.”

San Jose was outplayed and out-shot 16-6 (7-2 on goal) by Chicago, a team that had been last in the East in goals scored this season (15). Down several key regulars, the defense struggled to compete with the Fire, but kept the team in the game.

This wasn’t by any means unpredictable: the results simply haven’t been coming on the road for San Jose.With the loss, San Jose is left still in search of its first road win, going 0-5-4 in enemy territory this season. However, Kinnear isn’t too worried about being away from the friendly confines of Avaya Stadium going forward.

“I think the overall performances of the team is more important than the stadium we play in,” Kinnear said. “Saying that, I know we are good enough to win a game on the road, we need to stop giving up the first goal and coming from behind. Sometimes we need a little bit of magic and things to go our way and we’re not getting those right now.”

The defense hasn’t necessarily been the main issue for the Earthquakes — opponents have scored multiple times in just five of the Earthquakes last seventeen contests.

San Jose will look to rebound at home in their next contest, taking on FC Dallas (9-5-4) on Friday.

 

By: Joe Lami

photo from sjearthquakes.com: Promo for MLS Classico at Stanford Stadium on Saturday between the San Jose Earthquakes and the Los Angeles Galaxy

PALO ALTO, Calif.—The California Clasico never disappoints and 2016’s episode adds another great chapter to the historic rivalry between the San Jose Earthquakes and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The game that really saw everything, between great chances, red cards, and nearly all of the 50,816 fans in attendance yelling homophobic slurs ended in a 1-1 draw, thanks to some late heroics by the never-say-die Quakes.

The fans at Stanford Stadium truly saw fireworks on the pitch Saturday evening, right before one of the largest annual Bay Area firework displays lit up the Palo Alto sky.

San Jose had their mojo early, despite losing center back, Victor Bernardez to a right leg injury in just the seventh minute. Forward, Chad Barrett replaced him, changing the formation with the substitution. Barrett ended up being a vital piece for the Quakes, creating some great chances and knocking home the only San Jose goal of the evening in 90th minute.

The first half ended with no score, although San Jose had 12 of their 23 shot attempts.

Los Angeles scored first, netting home a header in the 69th minute. Steven Gerrard floated a cross from the right side into the middle of the box to find a wide open Giovani dos Santos for the 1-0 lead.

“I thought it was a really soft goal to give up. The ball was in the air a really long time,” said Earthquakes’ coach Dominic Kinnear.

Shea Salinas came in the 62 minute for San Jose, subbing Matias Perez Garcia and ended up being the difference maker. The guy known for his beautiful crosses had been working his magic, and it finally paid off in the 90th minute on a set piece when he found the head of Barett for the late equalizer. Barrett jumped high above the Galaxy defense and headed a one-bouncer past keeper, Brian Rowe for the score.

On military appreciation night, the pitch turned into a war-zone towards the end of the contest, as he nastiness reigned down, finishing with Ashley Cole receiving a red card for unsportsmanlike conduct just before the final whistle blew. LA coach, Bruce Arena, commented on the officiating, “if the officials look at that last 15 minutes of that game, they’d be very disappointed in their performance. That was a poor display.”

San Jose is content with the outcome, as they feel like they did enough to win the contest, but are also happy getting a point of it as well. Both San Jose and Los Angeles are battling for playoff position in the Western Conference. LA currently is one point up on San Jose in the standings. Each team has played 16 games.

~ Photo by Eric Cech

~ By Pearl Allison Lo

~ Both teams returning from the two week international break and their last matchup with each other, San Jose was eliminated in the 4th round of the Open Cup, with a 2-0 win by Portland Tuesday.

This was the third overall Open Cup matchup between the teams, all of them played in Portland. All had one side going scoreless.

Shots were almost even 10-9, but the Quakes had no shots on target compared to seven for the Timbers.

After being ejected last game, Portland’s Dairon Asprilla, who had the first goal, had four shots, with a season-high three on target.

The first goal was a questionable goal in the 34th minute. Jack Barmby sent a ball to Jack McInerney, who only got a touch on it. Matheus Silva’s slide to save then went off goalie Bryan Meredith and to Asprilla. What made the goal questionable was that while the ball made its way to the net, McInerney was behind Meredith and as Meredith missed and then made another attempt, it could be argued that McInerney prevented Meredith from making the save.

For the second goal, a hand ball by Silva set up a free kick. McInerney’s teammate then faked a kick right before McInerney made sure at least one of his team’s goals were not in doubt, as he sent the ball above the wall past Meredith in the 40th minute.

San Jose started having more possession in the 55th thru 70th minutes.

The Quakes’ Marvell Wynne stopped a breakaway by Neco Brett in the 91st minute.

Game notes: It was the Timbers’ second straight clean sheet in as many games. San Jose has now been shut out their past three games. Meredith made a season-high five saves. A bright spot for the Quakes: for the first time since Week Two, Clarence Goodson was seen on the bench. San Jose will return to MLS play again Saturday when they face Orlando City SC at 4:30pm.  In case you didn’t notice, @ for #PORvSJ, first time in the 18 since Week 2 #quakes74 #usoc

 

By Matthew T.F. Harrington

photo from sanjoseearthquakes.com: The San Jose Earthquakes were close but not close enough losing in Portland 1-0

The San Jose Earthquakes were a veritable firing squad Wednesday night at Provedence Park, but the Portland Timbers survived volley after volley after an 11^th minute goal to win 1-0 at home. The Quakes fired off 13 shots in total to just 2 Timbers bids but defender Liam Ridgewell’s header off a free kick was the difference maker in the midweek match-up. It was the second straight contest that saw the Earthquakes missing the majority of their offense due to international duty.

Fatai Alashe’s offense on Diego Valeri in the Timbers’ attacking half in the 10^th minute set up the Portland strike. On the kick, Valeri chipped the ball to the far side just outside the penalty box. From there, Ridgewell headbutted the ball past Quakes keeper David Bingham for the lead.

Just two minutes later Quincy Amirakwa nearly tied the game after connecting on Matias Perez Garcia’s free kick attempt. Perez Garcia was active throught the game, nearly scoring on a free kick in the 53^rd minute. An Amirakwa header in the 76^th minute almost found the mark as well for the third of San Jose’s three shots on net.

The game got chippy early and often. In total, five cards were issued. San Jose’s Matteus Silva received the first yellow of the match in the 17^th minute, but Portland’s Dairon Asprilla was sent off with a red card in stoppage time to end the first half. The returning Jordan Stewart, Chad Barrett and Perez Garcia also were issued yellow cards for the Quakes.

The Quakes receive a two week respite while all eyes turn to the Copa America. Their next match will be in the Sunshine State on June 18^th against Orlando FC. The following Saturday San Jose takes the pitch at Stanford Stadium for the second leg of the California Clasico.

 

By Matthew T.F. Harrington

photo by USA Today: San Jose Earthquakes goaltender David Bingham get his fourth clean sheet of 2016 in a 0-0 draw with Dallas at Avaya Stadium on Saturday

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The unbeaten streak at Avaya Stadium continued Saturday night for the San Jose Earthquakes, but a chance at overtaking Los Angeles for second place in the Western Conference went by the wayside for a makeshift Quakes lineup. San Jose and FC Dallas crawled to a nil-nil draw in a match that saw the Quakes take the pitch without five players who have accounted for 75% of their total goals this season.

“Overall I’m not terribly thrilled,” assessed Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear of the team’s result. “But I’m not digging a grave either.”

With Copa America almost underway, the Quakes leading scorer Chris Wondolowski (7 goals) was absent from Saturday’s competition. He instead was playing 1,800 miles away in Kansas City, representing the United States in an international friendly tune-up against Bolivia.

Apart from Wondolowski, the Earthquakes were also without Anibal Godoy and Alberto Quintero (Panama), Kip Colvey (New Zealand) and Simon Dawkins (Jamaica). That group makes up for 12 of the Earthquakes total 16 goals.

Mix in injuries to a number of Quakes players like Innocent, Matheus Silva and Clarence Goodson as well and San Jose seemed short more players than were dressing. It was a struggle to field a fit 18.

“It’s been difficult,” said Kinnear. “But every team goes through it. I’m not going to say our team is the only team to go through injury problems and call-ups. It’s just coinciding with each other and leaving us a little short-handed.”

Chemistry was an early and ongoing issue for the ragtag Quakes, but the team still managed to connect on 74 percent of their passes. They did struggle in the final third, connecting on just over half (53 percent) of their passes, and didn’t generate many chances. In fact, both teams managed only two shots on target a piece.

“At times we let ourselves down with our side passing the closer we got to goal,” said Kinnear. “But the effort we got from everyone was 100 percent.”

While two shots on target for isn’t enough for the Quakes, the two going the other way were nice. Despite struggling to fill the roster, the Quakes still managed to bog down a Dallas team that has scored 23 goals this season over its first 14 games and nearly found three points late in the game. Tommy Thompson, playing the full 90 minutes at midfield for the first time all season, narrowly missed bouncing a header past Dallas keeper Chris Seitz in the 88^th minute. Seitz managed to corral the ball and keep the contest even, earning a point on the road for Dallas.

“When Tommy got his head on that ball late in the game it was going to be something good for us,” said Kinner.

With only one point in hand, San Jose will have little time to try to develop a cohesive unit. They head to Portland to face the Timbers Wednesday night again facing the possibility of being shorthanded.

“It doesn’t matter who is playing and who is not,” said Kinnear. “The expectation is always the same. We expect to win a game.”

 

 

~ Photo credit: San Jose Earthquakes

~ By Pearl Allison Lo

CARSON– Late goals in the California Clasico highlighted the already intense competition between San Jose and the Los Angeles Galaxy in a 1-1 draw.

It was the largest crowd of the year at the StubHub Center, a 27,167 standing-room-only sellout.

As Thuc Nhi Nguyen mentioned, another Sebastian Lletget cross turned into an own goal, after a deflection by Marvell Wynne in the 83rd minute.

The own goal came after a flurry of shots against goalie David Bingham, several handled directly by him. Robbie Keane had a breakaway in the 78th minute and Giovani dos Santos followed with another breakaway in the same minute. Robbie Rogers also missed with a close chance in the 81th minute.

For the second goal, Shea Salinas put the ball towards the net from the right side. Goalie Brian Rowe was able to get a hand on it and Chad Barrett got to the ball after it landed on the grass on the left side. Barrett hung on to the ball, was blocked, played with his defender and then sent the ball in from the left side. Fatai Alashe finished with an equalizing header past Row in the 87th minute.

It was the fewest goals for Los Angeles since April 2.

Bingham was called on to make three saves in his 50th start for the team.

The Earthquakes had the majority of the possession in the first half, even in the early minutes, including a sequence for a while, that involved two corner kicks by Matias Perez Garcia leading up to the 9th minute.

Then Keane bounced a header wide in the 10th minute, during the Galaxy’s next opportunity.

Alashe had San Jose’s first shot in the 11th minute and forced Rowe to make his first save.

Rowe made his second save when the Earthquakes’ Chris Wondolowski made a shot from right outside the goal box after a collision with his defender caused him to go parallel in the 14th minute.

San Jose’s Shaun Francis had a nice takeaway from Mike Magee in the 20th minute.

The Earthquakes’ Alberto Quintero & Rogers made contact twice in a row in the 22nd & 23rd minutes. The second one ended with the game’s only yellow card to Quintero.

San Jose’s Victor Bernardez left the field temporarily after a kick in the face by Jelle Van Damme in the 24th minute.

Van Damme was able to avoid a yellow when he tripped Simon Dawkins outside the box in the 34th minute, resulting in a free kick.

In the 38th minute, Wondolowski with Daniel Steres behind him, hit the crossbar kicking from a left corner angle.

The last attempts in the first half came in stoppage time. Bingham made his first save when dos Santos shot at 45:24 and Wondolowski shot in the 46th minute.

Keane was the only one with multiple shot attempts for Los Angeles in the first half. Alashe, Perez Garcia and Dawkins all had two shots apiece. Wondolowski led all with three.   

In the first half, the Earthquakes had more passes, passing accuracy and possession with the Galaxy winning duels. In the second half, it was the opposite.

There were several upsetting challenges on both sides.

Los Angeles had its own missed opportunity off the crossbar when dos Santos’ shot bounced off in the 72nd minute. Giovani had a crossbar shot

San Jose’s Cordell Cato came on for his first MLS action of the year in the 77th minute. After being injured in the preseason, Cato played in the Earthquakes’ previous friendly game against La Liga Side Real Sociedad.
Game notes: The Galaxy now have a nine-game unbeaten streak and San Jose now three. Los Angeles’ is now 3-0-3 versus the Quakes at Stubhub since the 2012 playoffs. The Galaxy’s Nigel de Jong returned to play 88 minutes. Teammate Alan Gordon came in during the 90th minute. San Jose next plays FC Dallas Saturday at 7:30pm.

By Ben Leonard
Follow @ben___leonard
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photo by USA Today: The San Jose Earthquakes Chris Wondolowski scores the first ever Earthquakes goal brace against an La Liga opponent at Avaya Stadium on Wednesday night
SAN JOSE, Calif — It’s not how you start that matters. It’s how you finish that does, they say. The San Jose Earthquakes were living proof of that unproven adage Wednesday night, scoring two unanswered goals to upset La Liga’s Real Sociedad 2-1 in a friendly.

Star forward Chris Wondolowski scored both goals for San Jose, including the go-ahead goal on a beautiful bender to beat goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli in the 79th minute.

But before Wondolowski sent Avaya Stadium into a frenzy, things were a little different. The Earthquakes more closely resembled a chicken running around with its head off than a shattering force of nature for the first twenty minutes, as midfielder Shea Salinas described.

Having not done any scouting or watching any film, the Earthquakes were listless, succumbing to Sociedad’s press, hardly every possessing the ball. “I thought for the first twenty minutes that they might have had twelve guys on the field,” Salinas elaborated.

Sociedad quickly made them pay, scoring a left-footed goal in the tenth minute, forcing them to stare down a 1-0 deficit. It seemed hopeless — Sociedad was just too well-conditioned and quick for the MLS’ Earthquakes to keep up with. The Earthquakes would get tired out and blown out, they said.

“Sometimes, the speed of the game and the speed of the opponent can catch you by surprise,” San Jose head coach Dominic Kinnear said Wednesday.”And I think it did — it forced us into making mistakes [early on]. But as the game went on, we got used to it. The goal didn’t shake us, and I think that was a good thing.”

After those first painful twenty minutes, something clicked. The Earthquakes figured out how to defend these new players and started communicating better, and everything fell into place. Even in a “low key” friendly as Kinnear called it, the Earthquakes kept battling. With Kinnear only coaching to call players out for lack of effort, it was on the Earthquakes to find it within themselves. And boy did they ever.

After several missed chances, San Jose finally broke through on Wondolowski’s first goal of the night. In the forty-second minute, Salinas drove to the corner of the net and dished it out to Wondolowski at the edge of the goal area, who drove it into the back of the net for his eighth goal of the season.

Later, in the second half, Wondoloski added the decisive goal on a scorching bender that just nestled in the bottom right corner of the net. Wondolowski now needs just sixteen goals to pass Jaime Moreno for third on the all-time MLS goals list.

“Once we got caught up to the speed of the game, because they were playing pretty good and made it difficult for us, we got better,” Kinnear said. “We were making some silly mistakes, but our possession was better, our ball movement was better, and then we started to create some chances and open the game up a little bit. All in all, I was really happy with the result — it gives you a good feeling when you walk off the field.”

The only negative came when midfielder Matheus Silva took a big blow to the head, and had to leave the game in the first half. He felt dizzy after the collision with a Sociedad player, and his fate was left in the doctor’s hands. The team physician barred him from playing in the second half for precautionary reasons, and his status for Sunday’s matchup against the Los Angeles Galaxy is uncertain.

By: Joe Lami

USA Today photo: San Jose Earthquakes celebrate with three goals and a win against the Houston Dynamo at Avaya Stadium in San Jose

SAN JOSE, Calif.–The San Jose Earthquakes remain undefeated at home after another impressive mid-week victory at Avaya. This time, the victim was the Houston Dynamo, also known as the Ex-Quakes.

San Jose got on the board with their earliest goal of the campaign, just three minutes into the contest in the 3-1 victory. Alberto Quintero got his first of the night after Chris Wondolowski hit a low cross down low in the box. Quintero just got enough of it with his right boot to poke it past Dynamo keeper Tyler Deric.

“No matter what the circumstances, getting an early goal is always great,” said Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear.

However, the lead wouldn’t last forever as the Dynamo tied things going into halftime, thanks to a Ricardo Clark strike in the 43rd minute. He one timed the ball from 24 yards out, after an initial save from David Bingham. The ball found the top right corner of the net to draw the game.

San Jose came out of the half the better team, as whatever Kinnear said at the half seemed to work. Quintero continued his great night, as he picked up an assist on the game-winning goal as Anibal Godoy scored his first of the season off the give and go with his fellow countryman. Godoy snuck it to the left of Deric for the lead in the 50th minute.

Quintero kept things going with his second goal of the night in the 70th minute. Wondolowski earned another helper, as he beat a double team passing to his left to a wide-open Quintero. Quintero had no problem burying it from six yards out.

Fans also were treated to a rare moment in the 80th minute, as Deric earned a red card after fouling Simon Dawkins outside of the box. Unfortunately for Houston, they were out of substitutions, as they used all three in the 59th minute. Being forced to put a defenseman in goal, Jalil Anibaba volunteered himself to be the makeshift keeper. Anibaba was challenged with a few good chances, but came up with the saves to keep the score 3-1.

The Quakes have this weekend off before they travel to Los Angeles next weekend, as they hope to try and end their winless streak on the road in a crucial game with a team that is higher on the table.