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San Jose Earthquakes scrape 1-1 draw with Vancouver to maintain playoff hopes

By on October 3, 2015

Quincy Amarikwa just won’t give up. © Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

The San Jose Earthquakes have managed to dig themselves into many holes this season. Tonight was no different, when their playoff hopes appeared vanquished as the Vancouver Whitecaps took a 1-0 lead into halftime at Avaya Stadium while playoff rivals Portland sat 0-0 at the half as they hosted Sporting Kansas City. Such results would have left the Timbers two points ahead of San Jose for the last playoff spot, and with an extra game in hand. Fortunes reversed in the second halves, however, as single goals by San Jose and Sporting KC were enough to leapfrog San Jose into sixth place heading into the club’s final two matches of the season.

Deep into the four minutes of stoppage time, however, all could have been lost, as San Jose hauled all their men into Vancouver’s box for a last chance free-kick that Godoy uncharacteristically scuffed. The ball fell right to Vancouver’s Kekuta Manneh, who surged forward on a two on-one against David Bingham, only for the goalkeeper to miraculously pounce on Manneh’s final touch.

“I saw a bit of a heavy touch and I thought that was my best chance to go on and stop their counter and it worked out,” said Bingham. “If he was going to beat me, he was going to beat me, but I didn’t want to beat myself in that situation. I didn’t want to give him an easy goal, so I stood up and saw my chance and took it.”

If, after all the desperate fighting, the Quakes don’t make the playoffs this season it won’t be for a lack of trying. No matter how many curveballs they’ve been thrown from every possible international match and how bad they’ve occasionally been (including tonight’s opening period), or how many crosses Shaun Francis has skied, they’ve maintained hope. That hope still clings from a thread as they sit level on points and ahead on goal difference with Portland in the final playoff spot. In his post match press conference, Dominic Kinnear couldn’t help letting out a little chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

“You always get fight out of this group,” said Quakes defender Clarence Goodson. “You got a lot of guys with a lot of pride working their tails off. We’re not the most beautiful team to watch, although I think this team is capable of playing beautiful soccer, much more so than in years past, but no matter what you get fight out of the group.”

JJ Koval chases as Kekuta Manneh breaks in on goal in the dying seconds of the game. © Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

Between Vancouver’s fluky opening goal and David Ousted’s mistake leading to the Earthquakes’ equalizer, the game was hardly poetic yet the verses there were only help to intensify an increasingly riveting playoff battle.

Kinnear kept “one eye out” on the Portland-Kansas City scoreline several hundred miles up the coast, yet his own side could have taken their fate back into their own hands with a win. A draw was only “okay.”

His answer might have been a littler different in the first half, when the Quakes lacked any sort of attacking spark. Although the home side promised with a few fluid attacking plays early on, their impetus quickly petered out and JJ Koval, filling in for Fatai Alashe and Marc Pelosi in the middle, scuffed their only chance of note over the crossbar on the end of Cordell Cato’s cut-back.

“I thought we came out with good energy, but kind of in the wrong places,” said Chris Wondolowski. “I thought we were a bit jittery at times, giving away silly fouls, silly set pieces and got punished.”

So much has been said of Wondo’s positioning in the past few months, whether he should feature in a more traditional poacher’s role or tuck further into the midfield. Tonight, however, he was caught in no man’s land somewhere in between.

Bingham came up big on multiple occasions, most notably to keep out a curling twenty yard effort from Octavio Rivero, and Manneh also dragged a low effort wide of the post from the edge of the area in the twenty-fourth minute. Yet the opening goal finally came when Rivero, a dot of white surrounded by four Quakes defenders near the penalty spot, saw his low effort deflect off the foot of Shaun Francis, then loop back off Rivero’s own leg, over Bingham and into the back of the net.

The Quakes, however, realized that their playoff hopes were slipping away right in front of their own eyes and as Kinnear put it: “came out with a better attitude” in the second half. “I thought we were better on the second balls,” he said. “We were knocking the ball down, we were running back – I mean, the play Shea Salinas made on Manneh [a last-ditch sliding tackle] was just a great example of our attitude in the second half.”

Shea Salinas makes a tackle on Manneh. © Football Every Day and Aaron Morgan

 

Kinnear threw Tommy Thompson into the fray and shifted into a system with three at the back as the Quakes pushed for an equalizer, though Kinnear said they only reached a point of desperation when Goodson stayed up top as a target man.

In the sixty-second minute, Wynne slipped Cato through in down the right and the winger saw his low effort from a tight angle deflect back into the box, where Wondo, having had little impact otherwise, capitalized for a tap-in. The twists and turns of the Quakes’ season has never failed to amaze.

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.