Wondolowski century shakes up SJ Earthquakes, Orlando City draw

By on May 24, 2015

The San Jose Earthquakes and Orlando City drew a blank. There wasn’t one goal from open play, and the two from the penalty spot cancelled each other out. For long stretches, it was a tight and balanced tie. Even when Brek Shea was sent off, Orlando City’s defense held out. “Sometimes defense rules the day and I think that’s kind of what happened,” Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear said.

“You have to give credit to (Orlando), but I thought in the first half and in the second, obviously with being up a man, I just thought 40 yards and in we were just a little bit missing today. Shea [Salinas] had a couple good opportunities in the first half, we had a couple chances off of set pieces. They were well organized. I thought we were pretty well organized to stop their counter-attack.”

But Earthquakes fans were only there to see one goal: Chris Wondolowski’s one-hundredth for the Quakes. It wasn’t anything pretty, but perhaps representative of the ninety-nine that came before it, a pure finishers goal. Jordan Stewart was bundled down in Orlando’s penalty area, and Wondolowski stepped up to take the following penalty. “I was planning on going to my right and was going to hit it firm and I saw that Tally [Hall] got a good jump on it, so I was able to just roll it the other way. I took a little peek up,” Wondolowski said afterwards.

“It took a lot of hard work. I appreciate everyone that helped me along the way, starting from youth, high school, college and all the way up the ranks. I appreciate all my teammates because I couldn’t do it without them. Even today, Jordan Stewart getting the penalty for me.”

Even if it was a disappointing result, with the Earthquakes pressing for the win after Orlando went down to ten men following Shea’s red card, Kinnear was overjoyed for his star forward. “In talking to Chris after the game, he’s a little bit disappointed at the result, and I said, ‘Take a step back, and just kind of realize what you’ve done,'” Kinnear said. “It’s an incredible achievement, it couldn’t happen to a better guy.”

Granted, it wasn’t the Quakes best performance. They began in the usual 4-1-4-1 formation with Adam Jahn up front and Fatai Alashe rooting the midfield but the coherence that was on exhibit in their 2-0 win over Columbus Crew last weekend just wasn’t there; indeed, the matches bore many resemblances. Kinnear said the situation was, “sort of a carbon copy of last week.”

Orlando began on the front foot, yet the Quakes’ pressing broke up play and Kinnear’s men were quick on the counter-attack. Shea Salinas was again versatile, troubling Orlando both with his combination play and runs, and struck the side-netting after a marauding run in the twenty-second minute.

And there was the red card. Brek Shea went in for a lunging, two-footed tackle on Sanna Nyassi, which put the Quakes up a man for the second time in less than a week. Last time, it turned the match on its head, this time, fans at Levi’s Stadium simply must have been pleased that all the pent up tension then poured out. Matias Perez-Garcia’s curling twenty-five yard effort forced Orlando goalkeeper Tally Hall into a great scooping save but the Quakes’ pressure also exposed them at the back, too. Sixty-four minutes in, Cyle Larin ran onto a long ball and after a miscommunication between David Bingham and Clarence Goodson, the former clattered Larin to the ground. Kaka buried the following penalty.

“I thought we defended that terribly,” Kinnear said of the penalty. “It’s a straight long ball that’s in the air for probably 60 yards… So for us to allow that ball to bounce once close to our area is a definite no-no. That little five-second segment there was, I would think, the worst we’ve defended all year. And we got punished for it.”

But the Quakes still had the momentum, so Kinnear took a gamble to get the result by piling men forward. Just three minutes after Kaka’s goal, the Quakes had a penalty of their own as Darwin Ceren bundled over Stewart. Wondolowski stepped up to take the penalty, less than six years after his first goal for the Quakes. With a little peek up, he tucked it into the bottom-left corner, opposite of Hall’s dive.

When asked how his game has developed since his first goal, Wondo said: “I think just confidence. It’s something I wanted so bad that sometimes I’d run myself out of good opportunities, good movement. Now I know to just let the game come to me. I trust it. The game’s slowed down a bit. I’ve adjusted to it.” That confidence and know-how was showcased perfectly in his penalty.

Homepage photo credit: Noah Salzman on Wikipedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.