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Where’s Wondo? San Jose Earthquakes season review; Part Two

By on October 30, 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″ center-backs — 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.

In Part II of our reflections on the 2015 season, we look at the team’s midseason of challenges and promising triumphs. In Part I, we examined the Quakes’ transition from miserable 2014 season into a myriad of new beginnings.

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As you walk past the boot wall in the Earthquakes locker room, donned with each players’ cleats in no particular order, and Chris Wondolowski’s five pairs tucked away in the corner, it is easy to spot the bold, eye-catching team motto in black and blue: “Eleven playing as one.”

Words to live by in football perhaps, but as the Quakes season got down to business this season, they gradually lost touch with this very motto. Following a 2-1 loss to the New England Revolution on the East Coast, Kinnear made his first big tactical change of the season heading into a home meeting with Real Salt Lake. Against New England, Koval and Pierazzi returned as the Quakes’ central-midfield partners in a 4-2-3-1. Yet neither particularly impressed on the night, and against RSL, Kinnear opted to throw Alashe into the deep end as the sole holding midfielder in a 4-1-4-1. From that point on, Pierazzi and Koval were restricted to four starts for the rest of the season.

Alashe held his own from the outset, but the larger focus was on the Quakes’ front line as their goalscoring woes reappeared in a 1-0 loss, highlighted by Javier Morales’ beautiful volley on the brink of the half. The tactical nuances were heavily debated but basically, Alashe protected the back four and Garcia was ahead of him in an attacking-midfield role. Wondolowski dropped into the midfield alongside him and Emeghara and Nyassi played opposite of each other. Emeghara was the most guilty of an individualistic style of play, adept at running down the wings but lacking in the area of combination play.

“We’ve sometimes got to be a bit less selfish,” Kinnear said, while Wondolowski similarly lamented, saying: “At times we were too individualistic.”

Although Shea Salinas filled in for a suspended Emeghara during the Whitecap’s visit on April 11, the Quakes’ attacking woes resurfaced upon Emeghara’s return, as the Quakes embarked lost to the New York Red Bulls in the US Open Cup in New York. In the first week of May, Kinnear’s men faced a grueling road-trip consisting of three games, three cities, and 3,623 miles of travel all in seven days. The travel proved all too much for Emeghara and midway through the trip, he found himself sidelined with a knee injury that would keep him out for the rest of the season. With him went the Quakes’ focus on individualism.

Alashe started in all three games in the 4-1-4-1 as the Quakes drew RSL 1-1, then beat Houston 1-0 and gave up a late equalizer in their 1-1 draw with the Colorado Rapids. Wondolowski scored two of the Quakes’ three goals during this streak from the midfield and the emphasis moved from individualism to his positioning. Wondo is a born poacher, his movement deceiving defenders and knack for popping up in the right places at the right time far from lucky. Later in the season, in October, he was nearly invisible for much of the Quakes’ 1-1 draw with the Vancouver Whitecaps; yet in the sixty-second minute, he kept tracking the play and making runs and when Cordell Cato burst into the box down the right and saw a shot spilled by the goalkeeper, Wondo was on hand to pick up the pieces and give the Quakes the lead.

The goal epitomized Wondo’s knack for being in the right place and finishing when it matters. Quakes fans argued that stuffing him in the midfield muted his effect; however, Wondo proved that the debate was mostly semantic by scoring the ninety-ninth goal of his Quakes career in a 2-0 win over Columbus. “[It’s] only a number, but a number associated with a group of the best players in the league,” he said after the match.

Orlando visited the following week in the Quakes’ only match of the season at Levi’s Stadium. It is a massive, very corporate stadium that was the oddest of places for Wondolowski, who thrived off poaching goals behind hulking forwards at the 10,000 seater Buck Shaw Stadium, to score the hundredth of his Quakes career.

The result put the Quakes on nineteen points in seventh place in the Western Conference, thirteen games into the season. With a game in hand, however, and only seven points separating them from the top of the table, they began to rid the nerves of a new beginning and got down to work as the team entered the heart of the regular season.

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We’re back at the Quakes’ training pitch. It’s Monday, June 14th and the team is preparing for a midweek US Open Cup meeting with their closest local rivals, the Sacramento Republic, the next day. The match was overshadowed by a pending visit to Seattle at the weekend and Kinnear was preparing to start a number of substitutes, including Paulo Renato, Ty Harden, JJ oval, Jean-Baptiste Pierazzi, Khari Stephenson, Mark Sherrod, and backup goalkeeper Bryan Meredith. It was a one-leg, knockout tie and as such, Kinnear had his team practice penalties.

Sacramento, however, didn’t practice their spot-kicks.

The Quakes were scrappy and unconvincing, highlighting their lack of depth. By the fifty-four minute, Sacramento had taken a 2-0 lead. It was up to Wondo to pull the Quakes back with two late goals in the space of five minutes. The match went into extra-time and after a half hour of scoreless play, penalties loomed.

Kinnear knew he wanted Wondo to take the first kick and sure enough, the US Men’s National Team veteran buried the first penalty of the shootout. Three penalties later it was tied at two all. Although Khari Stephenson missed, Bryan Meredith saved Mickey Daly’s spot-kick to keep the shootout level. But then Pierazzi missed and Gilberto Santos scored. The pressure was on Tommy Thompson, the teenager, who had to make the Quakes’ fifth penalty. Kinnear said of putting Tommy fifth: ”I had a couple guys written down, I said ‘Tommy, you good?’ He said yes. I said, ‘Okay, you’re five.’”

Thompson awoke on Monday morning, in New Zealand, where he had stayed for the best part of three weeks. He had been a part of the US’ U-20 World Cup squad that were knocked out of the tournament in the Quarterfinals on penalties to Serbia, the eventual winners, on Sunday night. The tournament meant he missed the Quakes’ 3-1 away loss to Toronto on May 30th and their 0-0 draw to Dallas at home, a match marred by three controversial red cards.

The 19-year-old witnessed his team lose 5-6 after being substituted in the 108th minute. As such, he actually relished taking the crucial penalty. “Actually, that’s what I was thinking. Getting pulled in the 108th minute was tough when we ended up losing in the shootout so I wanted to avenge our loss.”

His fourteen-hour flight landed on Mondayat about “three or four PM” and hemissed the Quakes’ training that day. The very training they practiced penalties. “Nah, I got here, Fatai picked me up at the airport and then just basically slept until it was time to come here,” Thompson told Football Every Day.

Nonetheless, he coolly scored. Emrah Klimenta, Sacramento’s hero in regulation time, still had a chance to win it for the Republic; but Meredith made another crucial save.
It went to sudden death, where James Kiffe, Sacramento’s eighth taker, blazed his penalty high over the crossbar to put the Quakes through to the next round.

Stay tuned for Part III.

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.