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New Beginnings: San Jose Earthquakes season review; Part 1

By on October 29, 2015

It was my first training session outside the San Jose Earthquakes’ new Avaya Stadium. The team practice on a pitch adjacent to the stadium and when I walked in, they were practicing finishing. I noticed that the balls kept flying over the nets behind the goal and commented that the team needs to get a bigger fence. Another beat reporter whispered in my ear: “Or better players.”

There are many nuances that Americanize Major League Soccer — ranging from minute to the size of 6’5″ centerbacks — and over the course of the season the Earthquakes have felt every one; from the glories of a new stadium, the announcement of the 2016 MLS All Star game in San Jose, and visits from stars such as Kaka, Steven Gerrard, and Clint Dempsey, to the growing pains that include a lack of depth, key players lost to international duty (with no MLS breaks) and finally a disappointing near-miss for a playoff spot.

Now it’s time to reflect on the season, down the pitch, into the dressing room, and the heart of the Earthquakes’ 2015 MLS campaign. We’ve compiled our experiences at Football Every Day from a season covering the Quakes live on gamedays: in this Part One, we look at the team’s transition from a miserable 2014 season into a bright new future at Avaya Stadium.

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Rewind to the final day of the 2014 MLS regular season in Carson, California, where the San Jose Earthquakes faced Chivas USA. The Quakes’ playoffs hopes had been long lost within their seemingly endless winless streak but interim coach Ian Russell, who took the reigns after Mark Watson’s sacking, simply wanted to salvage some of the club’s dignity. They were without a goal in three games and only the heroics of goalkeeper John Busch, who made the most saves in a single MLS season since 2007, spared them even more embarrassment.

Yet even his saves on the night could not keep the Quakes from losing 1-0 to Chivas, their fourteenth consecutive winless match. “At this moment, I’d trade every one of those saves for a win,” Busch said after the match, per the San Jose Mercury News. “I’d trade every one of those saves to be in the playoffs and keep playing. That’s the only thing that matters to me.”

“This is a terrible season. It hurt. It hurt a lot that we couldn’t find a way to get out of this and right the ship.
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“I’ve been around a long time and, usually, every team goes through tough times during the season. But you always find ways to get out of it. Unfortunately, this year, we just could not find a way. That drove me crazy.”

The Quakes might not have appreciated it then, but that very loss opened up a glimmer of hope for them this season. It put them last in the Western Conference and gave them the fourth pick in the MLS Superdraft. The first went to expansion Orlando City, who drafted Cyle Larin, the sixth top scorer in the regular season with twenty-four goals. Two more highly touted forwards, Khiry Shelton and Romario Williams went to New York City FC and the Montreal Impact, respectively.

With their pick, the Quakes took Fatai Alashe, a midfielder from Michigan State University. He had impressed at the MLS Combine and was one of only eight players to sign an early contract with MLS.

Photo credit: Noah Salzman, via Wikipedia Commons

“I could see Fatai playing in the middle of a 4-4-2,” Kinnear said with amazing foresight. “He could play in a 4-3-3 as well. He’s not an attacking midfielder, but he can play somewhere in between and be more of a box-to-box guy.”

After the draft, Kinnear also shared one particular jewel from their interview with Alashe. They had asked him where he saw himself three to five years and Alashe responded: “An MLS All-Star.”

It actually took Alashe just five minutes into his home debut to write his name into the Quakes’s history book, nodding home an early corner against the Chicago Fire to score the first goal at Avaya Stadium. The twenty-two-year-old didn’t travel to the Quakes’ first game of the season, a 1-0 loss to Dallas, but he impressed enough in his debut a week later, a 3-2 win over the Seattle Sounders at Century Link Field to ensure his starting position on the big day.

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Apart from Alashe, however, the Quakes had a rather unfulfilling offseason. The team clearly needed a makeover and the man they brought in to facilitate it was MLS veteran Dominic Kinnear. The Scotland-born manager moved to the Bay Area at the age of three and after a nomadic professional career that included a stint at the San Jose Clash, he began his managerial career back in San Jose as an assistant coach in 2001. In 2004, he was promoted to head coach after the team won the MLS Cup and managed to win the Supporters’ Shield before relocating to Houston with the team, where he remained before the Quakes picked him up again.

Kinnear first cut a bunch of deadweight to clear the team’s slate, including Busch and veteran midfielder Sam Cronin. Yet their replacements, few in number, were not obvious upgrades on reputation alone. Kinnear brought in young midfielder Leandro Barrera from Argentina and also picked up two MLS veterans, full-back Marvell Wynne and winger Sanna Nyassi. It wasn’t until the announcement of the Quakes’ third designated player, Innocent Emeghara, a nimble, pacy forward from Switzerland, that the team put big money on the table. Kinnear was placing a lot of trust in the Quakes’ second designated player, Matias Perez Garcia, who returned from a season-ending injury in time for preseason.

Kinnear took this jumble of players and began to experiment in preseason. In his first match in charge of the Quakes, Kinnear faced none other than his old Houston Dynamo. But Kinnear was loath to hype up his old club. “Give a [darn]?” said Quakes goalkeeper coach Tim Hanley, finishing a reporter’s question. “He doesn’t.
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“He’s got ego, like everybody,” said Hanley, who was part of Kinnear’s backroom staff for the entirety of his eight years in Houston. “But I think if you look at him, the circumstances and the big games he’s been in, it’ll just be a tick. There’s not going to be a bunch of quotes. You’re never going to get him going, saying something.”

The Quakes lost 3-2 but there were plenty of takeaways for Kinnear to dissect. Some aging squad members were immediately benched, notably Khari Stephenson and the injured Steven Lenhart. He used Jean-Baptiste Pierazzi and JJ Koval in a double-pivot defensive midfielder pairing in a 4-2-3-1 but both failed to impress. Adam Jahn scored both of the Quakes’ goals and David Bingham filled in as Busch’s natural successor. Four days later, Garcia started and assisted the Quakes’ only goal in a 1-1 draw with the Vancouver Whitecaps, which also marked Emeghara’s first appearance for the Quakes.

Veteran center-back Clarence Goodson was sidelined with injury and Kinnear rotated between using Victor Bernardez, Ty Harden and Paulo Renato as centerbacks in preseason. Wynne found a home opposite of Shaun Francis (who was rotated with Jordan Stewart) as a right-full-back after beating Brandon Barklage to the starting position. This backline kept a clean sheet against the Portland Timbers and beat the Colorado Rapids, and in the Quakes’ 1-0 win over the Sacramento Republic, Goodson returned to play alongside Bernardez at the back.

The Quakes’ first real test in preseason came in the “soft opener” of Avaya Stadium against the LA Galaxy. Off the pitch, it was a test run of the stadium’s functionality with 10,000 spectators. Perennial chants emanated from the ultras section, starting a half-hour before kickoff and ending only after they were politely kicked out of the stadium long after the whistle blew, the chorus having transformed from “beat LA” to “we’ve beat LA.”

 

On the pitch, though, the Quakes were tough as nails in a 3-2 victory over their rivals. Kinnear opted for the 4-2-3-1 he used throughout preseason and the first goal at Avaya came in the form of an own goal as Omar Gonzalez deflected Shea Salinas’ cross into the back of his own net. Salinas also assisted a goal from Jahn in the second half after Koval had put the Quakes in the lead. All in all, the test run went by without a hitch for the Quakes.

Kinnear used the same lineup in their season opener with Dallas. Playing against a bright, young side the Quakes were made to sit deep and defend, but a scrappy late winner in extra-time from Blas Perez highlighted Bingham’s inexperience, having been stranded in no-mans land after a half-cleared punch.

The following week against Seattle, the Quakes’ defensive frailties were again exposed as the Sounders took the league twenty-four seconds in, Clint Dempsey nodding home the rebound from Bingham’s early save. Yet for the first time under Kinnear, the Quakes’ attacking force came together. Wondolowski turned the game around with two poacher’s goals and despite Bernardez’s second half red card, Emeghara combined with Garcia and finished a jinxing run with a cool finish to announce himself to the Quakes fanbase. The win made the last leg of the Quakes’ long march home just that little bit easier to make.

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Major League Soccer is still considered a young league, despite a twenty-year history that has included a lifetime’s worth of ups and downs for San Francisco Bay Area fans. Two major rebrands, two periods of wild success, and two years entirely without a club have punctuated the roller-coaster ride of one Phillip Luna’s Quakes’ fandom.

Among Avaya Stadium’s many perks, including the longest outdoor bar in North America, is a standing section for supporters’ groups at the West End of the stadium. It is here where Phillip watched Avaya’s regular season opener against the Chicago Fire on a cloudy afternoon in late March. Above him sat the ultras.“The atmosphere is amazing…the ultras [do] a great job,” Phillip told Football Every Day in an interview. The sound is amazing, the top really locks that sound in and gives us home field advantage.”

Avaya also has the steepest stands of any stadium in MLS, leaving no truly bad seat in the house. Tucked high into a corner of the stadium sat an assortment of former Quakes players, who enjoyed magnificent views of the pitch. Among them was Johnny Moore, former general manager of the Quakes. Moore managed the club between 2002 and 2003, only to quit in protest of a proposed purchase of the club by the Mexican side Club America. Although the deal eventually fell out, the Quakes still relocated to Houston in 2005 and San Jose went without an MLS side until 2008, when new owners brought back the old franchise. Soon, plans for Avaya in place, bringing the reassurance of permanence to the club.

“They can’t move now. Owners come and go. Fans stay. The club is here. It’s cemented in San Jose, and it should be,” Moore told ESPNFC’s Jeff Carlisle.

The Quakes also showed promising signs on the pitch and after Alashe’s early go-ahead goal, Ty Harden put the Quakes up 2-0 and although Chicago pulled one back, the home side sat in to preserve their lead. Not long after the final whistle, the clouds parted and a rainbow appeared above Avaya Stadium, signaling the club’s new beginnings on the pitch and off it.

Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3.

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.