Home   >   MOTDs   >   Missed opportunities mount as SJ Earthquakes draw Montreal 1-1

Missed opportunities mount as SJ Earthquakes draw Montreal 1-1

By on September 16, 2015

© Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

David Bingham didn’t want to beat around the bush. He was caught cheating to the wrong side when Kyle Bekker’s near-post effort sailed in from the edge of the box, the Montreal Impact’s only goal in their draw with the San Jose Earthquakes tonight. To his credit, Bingham owned up to his mistake – right out of the showers, Bingham didn’t hide anything from reporters. “I just wasn’t good enough,” he admitted. “This one is on me tonight. There are ten other guys on that field busting their butts the whole game.”

But Dominic Kinnear understood that these mistakes happen in the beautiful game. “I didn’t go in there and throw anything, or point fingers and throw some f-bombs,” the Quakes’ coach said. Although Bingham will absorb the brunt of the blame, there were other small nuances that helped cost the Quakes the win. Fatai Alashe pointed out that the Quakes should have taken more of their chances up front. “Obviously mistakes happen, but in a game where you are up a man, you shouldn’t be stuck on only one goal. We have to create a couple more chances to give ourselves a bigger cushion. As a team we just didn’t have it today.”

Kinnear added: “I thought we let ourselves down, let them off the hook, by letting our fans touch the ball instead of the goalkeeper or the net.”

The Quakes have now dropped leads in their past three games, yet this one hurts the most. Last weekend, they settled for a draw with the Seattle Sounders, but now against a ten-man Montreal side without Didier Drogba, Evan Bush, Marco Donadel, Justin Mapp and Ignacio Piatti, the Quakes missed a key chance to boost their playoff hopes.

From the beginning, Montreal sat back and frustrated the Quakes. Kinnear pushed Matias Perez-Garcia wide on the right and the Argentine midfielder terrorized Montreal cutting into the middle, with Marvell Wynne pushing forward on the overlap. Eighteen minutes in, Garcia had drifted all the way over to the right wing and found space to run at his defender, cutting inside and teeing Quincy Amarikwa, who couldn’t wrap his foot around the ball and get it on target at the near post.

Ten minutes later, Amarikwa let another chance go begging as he passed on two opportunities to shoot from Pelosi’s squared pass from the right side of the box. Yet while Amarikwa hasn’t scored in seven games he has made up for it with his work ethic, always finding himself in the right areas and busting a gut to make the Quakes’ attack tick. Just five minutes later, Pelosi robbed Eric Alexander twenty-five yards out from goal and poked the ball to Amarikwa. Although the twenty-seven-year-old saw his shot blocked, Chris Wondolowski was there to coolly tuck the rebound into bottom left corner from the edge of the box.

© Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

The Quakes pressed forward for a second and soon after, Wondo followed a neat one-two with Garcia with a beautiful curling effort destined for the top left corner that was clawed wide by Eric Kronberg. Then, forty-eight minutes in, Ambroise Oyongo saw red for a late challenge on Garica and set up the Quakes to press their advantage.

At this crucial moment in the game, with the margins slim in the playoff battle, it was the worst time for Bingham to let Bekker’s shot slip into the bottom right corner. Montreal had come closer earlier as Oduro flicked diving header wide of the far post on the hour mark but generally lacked prowess up front.

© Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

They ceded 63% of possession to a defensive-minded Quakes side and had half the number of shots than their hosts. The Quakes should have taken the lead late on as both Wondo and Shaun Francis saw close range efforts from tight angles drag wide of the far post but let the chances slip through their grasp. A draw on the night isn’t a step forward, but neither is it a step backward for Kinnear’s men. Given the circumstances, however, it is clearly a missed opportunity for the Quakes, who now face five more matches to play their cards.

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.