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Philly Union end San Jose’s win streak, handing Quakes a 2-1 defeat

By on September 5, 2015

Coming into tonight’s home fixture against the Philadelphia Union with four consecutive wins behind their backs, San Jose Earthquakes coach Dominic Kinnear said, “You don’t want to say we were waiting for that bad game…,” but in a league infamous for its parity and often head-scratching results, it was only fitting that the Quakes’ win streak, sparked by a 5-0 demolition of Sporting Kansas City, ended at home against the Eastern Conference’s second worst team. The Quakes were missing their two starting midfielders against the LA Galaxy last weekend, Anibal Godoy and Marc Pelosi, due to international duty, and their replacements Fatai Alashe and Matias Perez Garcia were both returning from injury. The ensuing ninety minutes of slow tempo, mistake-ridden play (“we didn’t tell them to do that,” Kinnear deadpanned after the match) was no coincidence.

As Kinnear emphasized after the match, Philadelphia sat deep and the Quakes lacked the penetration to break down Jim Curtin’s men. Although Philly’s game plan worked well, Kinnear’s men reminded one all too much of the pre-win streak and pre-Godoy team, stagnant on the attack and sloppy at the back.

Early on, the home side saw much of the ball, but high-pressing Philadelphia slowly grew into the game. Wondolowski dragged a low effort wide fourteen minutes in yet was largely invisible in the first half.

Simply put, the Quakes lacked spark in the midfield. Alashe was solid in a holding role but lacked cohesion with Matias Perez Garcia, with whom he hasn’t featured since August 1st. Neither could Alashe provide distribution akin to Godoy’s passing, which played a large role in Garcia dropping deeper and deeper for the ball.  Despite Salinas also dropping into the middle to support the midfield, neither faced attractive options pushing forward.

Salinas had previously mentioned that Godoy’s presence helped the Quakes win the ball higher up the field, allowing himself to maintain a higher position. Godoy’s absence tonight had the opposite effect. Kinnear explained: “We just needed to move the ball quicker. [Philly] were sitting in pretty tight and we needed to move the ball faster to get it wide quicker and maybe move them around a bit better.”

It was always going to be awkward with player absences and others fresh from injuries, but aside from Garcia, who was all over the pitch, the Quakes lacked even the intensity to compensate for their dysfunctional midfield. By the twentieth minute, their urgency was nowhere to be seen and Philadelphia game back into the game. Tranquillo Barnetta, who was Philly’s most dangerous player on the night, saw a low effort from a tight angle hit the side netting in the sixteenth minute and Sebastien Le Toux sliced a weak effort straight at David Bingham two minutes later.

Although Amarikwa forced John McCarthy into a save with a flicked header from Wynne’s long-throw in, the only shot on target in the first half. Given the slow tempo, that stat went a long way to summarizing the dearth of first-half action. Raymond Gaddis saw a twenty-five yard effort deflect just over the crossbar near the half-hour mark, yet by far the most influential moment of the half was when Victor Bernardez pulled up with a hamstring strain in the thirty-ninth minute. JJ Koval was the Quakes’ only defensive player on the bench (Kinnear said Paulo Renato, not in the Quakes’ eighteen tonight, isn’t in the picture if Bernardez’s injury keeps him out longer), but struggled after being thrown cold-turkey into the match. His first involvement was to bundle Sapong down on the edge of the area, which could easily have been given a penalty.

In the second half, the Quakes made an effort to push wider and in the fifty-second minute, Salinas flicked Wynne’s cross down for Amarikwa to poke onto the post, however, the Quakes’ turnovers were killing them. “That’s what we talked about at half time: ‘Hey, let’s play better. We’re trying to force things, we’re trying to do a little too much at times and it’s leading to turnovers,'” said Kinnear. “You’d love for the guys to be able to be perfect with their possessions and their passing every week, and you know it’s not going to happen. Sometimes it really hurts you, and sometimes you get away with it, and tonight we didn’t.”

Philadelphia had another penalty shout when Bingham tripped an incoming Philly attacker but the referee, who was inconsistent on the night and let many fouls go unpunished, instead awarded the Quakes a less obvious penalty in the sixty-second minute as Fabinho flicked far post cross past Wondo with his hand. Wondo coolly buried the penalty himself, waiting for McCarthy to dive before slotting it down the middle.

Yet in the seventy-fourth minute, Philly veteran Conor Casey came on and immediately got a surprise equalizer, rising above Koval to head home Gaddis’ far post cross. The Quakes were shellshocked and never recovered. Although Kinnear brought on Tommy Thompson and Adam Jahn, in the end the Quakes had three strikers on the bench (Mike Fucito and Mark Sherrod, along with Jahn) but no difference makers on the night. It was all too easy for Philly in the final third and with four minutes to go, Casey rose up again to head a corner home. The Quakes bemoaned their poor marking but as Clarence Goodson said after the match: “To say we should have won the game…is bogus.” Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong for the Quakes and the loss sets up a crucial playoff six-pointer with Clint Dempsey’s Seattle Sounders midweek. Then with Didier Drogba set to visit San Jose a few days later, the Quakes can only hope that Godoy and Pelosi’s return helps resurrects the team.

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.