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New-look SJ Earthquakes demolish Sporting KC 5-0

By on August 19, 2015

San Jose Earthquakes fans can now just try to remain calm. If there was a nervous, restrained excitement after the Quakes’ ended their six-match Major League Soccer losing streak against the Colorado Rapids at the weekend, it all came flooding out in a storm of five goals and seventeen shots against Sporting Kansas City tonight.

Against Colorado in their previous match, the Quakes banished their losing streak demons to keep their playoff hopes alive, but just barely. In reality, the performance that bested the Rapids 1-0 on Friday wouldn’t likely suffice to drag the Quakes back into the playoff race.

Today’s Earthquakes performance is a different story, however. To fit new signing Anibal Godoy and Fatai Alashe into the same lineup, Dominic Kinnear abandoned the 4-1-4-1 he has featured throughout the season and placed the two midfielders side by side in a 4-4-1-1. This also allowed Chris Wondolowski to return to his natural forward position and he bagged two goals. Given the cover of another midfielder, Shea Salinas and Cordell Cato also had more freedom to roam forward down the wings as Salinas set up each of Cato’s goals.

There were, however, mitigating circumstances. Namely, the fact that Sporting Kansas City were an utter shambles on the night. This was their third match in a week, though Peter Vermes’ men had only previously lost to Real Salt Lake City (twice in a short period of time) since May and were sitting third in the Western Conference with three games and four games in hand on the Vancouver Whitecaps and LA Galaxy, respectively. There was no precedent this season for such a meltdown and lack of discipline. Yet MLS is, after all, full of flukey results at times.

The Quakes opened their account three minutes in. Shea Salinas drove down the left wing and through the box to the byline, where he finally cut the ball back for Cato to finish. “Shea did very, very well and got past two defenders. I was running free from about thirty yards out and I kept screaming for it,” Cato told the CSN Bay Area broadcast. “Luckily [Salinas] played it and I was able to find the back of the net.”

Kinnear’s men didn’t look back. In the seventh minute, Kansas City goalkeeper Tim Melia’s lightning quick reactions kept out Clarence Goodson’s close-range volley and by the seventeenth, Wondolowski made it two from the penalty spot after Quincy Amarikwa was shoved by Chance Myers.

While Amariwka didn’t score on the night, it was one of his best performances in a Quakes shirt. The forward’s holdup play was outstanding and he won more fouls, five, than any other player bar Anibal Godoy.  “Dominic (Kinnear) told us before the game that if we could play the ball well out of pressure there was going to be space. We tried to play it in to Wondo (Chris Wondolowski) and Quincy (Amarikwa) and play off that and we found a lot of space inside doing that. It worked out well for us and we created a lot of chances,” explained Cato.

Cato and Salinas also dragged low efforts wide after two of their trademark runs and it wasn’t long before Godoy took Amarikwa’s layoff, beat a defender with a fake and tucked a low finish into the bottom right corner.

Although Kansas City came out and controlled possession in the second half, the Quakes were perfectly set up to defend with two holding midfielders; and given the home side’s frequent turnovers, Kinnear’s men often pounced on the break. Six minutes into the second period Wondo missed a sitter, with nobody in the vicinity not six yards out, after receiving Cato’s cut-back. In the fifty-eight minute, Salinas drove down the left and cut the ball back for Cato to finish in a near-identical goal to the Quakes’ first.

Krisztián Németh’s low twenty-five yard effort forced David Bingham into a brilliant save to tip the ball onto the post but Kansas rarely saw sight of goal.

It wasn’t long before Wondo got ahead of his marker to flick Alashe’s cross into the far corner of the net. Alashe then saw a brilliant side-volley tipped wide by Melia, before Godoy had a curling free-kick saved and substitute Adam Jahn hit the crossbar. Late on, Benny Feilhaber got himself sent off for pulling down Amarikwa but with five goals under their belt, the Quakes had put the game to bed long ago.

With seven of their last nine run-in matches in the MLS regular season, Kinnear can only hope the Quakes have found the spark to ignite a good run of form. Very suddenly, the playoff positions no longer appear quite so far away.  As Wondo put it: “Soccer is a huge game of momentum.”  For the Quakes, this performance has the potential to shift the tides.

Man of the Match: Shea Salinas

Homepage photo credit: Ryan Knapp, via Flickr

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.