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SAN JOSE, Calif — The San Jose Earthquakes’ early one-goal lead, courtesy of Yeferson Quintana’s first in Major League Soccer, didn’t stand up to a relentless New York City FC attack. The visitors to Avaya Stadium celebrated a 2-1 comeback win at the final whistle. Here are three lessons learned as the Quakes suffered their second straight defeat.
Stahre stingy with his substitutions
When his team fell behind in the 60th minute, Earthquakes coach Mikael Stahre instructed his team to engage more in attack. They responded with better possession and a host of shots on goal, but goalkeeper Sean Johnson kept every opportunity at bay.
A scary collision between Harold Cummings and Yangel Herrera with a quarter hour to go required the shaken Panamanian defender to leave the game. Stahre brought in forward Quincy Amarikwa, shifting the tactical focus higher up the field. It would be the only substitution the Quakes coach would make.
“For me, we can always discuss that, but it was also important to keep the momentum,” Stahre said. “Actually we created a lot of chances, that it why, and also we kept on our goal scores and added Quincy and we changed the shape also, going to three in the back.”
Albanian playmaker Jahmir Hyka, another proven goalscorer that could have helped San Jose find an equalizer, remained on the bench Saturday night. Stahre gambled that the team on the field could get the job done.
They did not.
“We came back and showed a good self-confidence,” defender Florian Jungwirth said. “We had some chances for the equalizer. Unfortunately, we didn’t score, so we are here with zero points which is very sad for us.”
Tommy Thompson, another creative player, wasn’t even in the matchday 18 for San Jose. Stahre elected to go with Valeri Qazaishvili for the entire 90 minutes, even though the Georgian recently returned from playing two international matches in Europe. Jackson Yueill, another young midfielder, kept the bench warm along with Hyka.
The Earthquakes certainly looked like they would get a game-tying goal in the last 20 minutes — they out shot and out possessed NYCFC for that entire duration — but without fresh legs and fresh ideas, the goal never came.
Wondo was less than wonderful
Chris Wondolowski did not have a good game Saturday evening. The active all-time leader in goals scored, 10 back of the MLS record, mustered up a couple of shots but never really tested Johnson.
Wondo appeared to score an equalizer with 10 minutes to go, but an offside call nullified the effort. He had another half-chance later, when a deflected save from Johnson ricocheted off the forward for a goal kick. But otherwise, the Quakes captain had a minimal impact on the game.
According to the Audi Player Index, a numerical system for ranking a player’s contribution to his team, Wondolowski had the lowest score of any attacking player on the field. It will be a game he will soon want to forget.
“The takeaway is that we walk away with zero points,” Wondolowski said. “There are some things we need to learn from and correct.”
Wondolowski is tasked with scoring goals, no doubt about that, but he also is required to help out in defense, especially in the middle of the field in the space between Jungwirth and Anibal Godoy — and especially against a possession oriented team like NYCFC. He too often ceded acres of space to the visitors, notably game-winning-goal scorer Maxi Moralez, something that will need to be addressed as part of the bigger picture effort to improve the team’s defense.
“Our defense played really well and showed up for the most part,” Wondolowski said, “but we let in a set piece goal and a good piece of play down the right hand side that lead to a deflected goal. You have to give a lot of credit to our defense, I thought they did well today, but we still have a lot of things to learn from.”
Speaking of defense…
San Jose has allowed seven goals in three games to open up the 2018 season, which continues a trend from last year of shipping too many chances to opponents. The Quakes have a fair number of new parts to their formation and a new coach in Stahre putting it all together, but the learning curve needs to shorten up if they don’t want to fall too far behind in the Western Conference.
“We have new players and we have a new philosophy from our coach,” Jungwirth said. “It’s quite a new eleven, so, sure it needs time to develop. But we have now lost two times, which is not good, but I believe we are on the right path and we will surely get the right results in the coming weeks.”
The centerback duo of Cummings and Quintana looked a step better than in past games, but the midfield pairing of Jungwirth and Godoy still needs improvement. On Moralez’ goal, Godoy was slow to track the playmaker, and Jungwirth’s late intervention was not enough to slow the Argentine. Stahre wants his team to press more, but they won’t be effective at it if they can’t sync in the center of the formation.
“We had some pressing situations where we played well and won the ball, but you can’t press all the time, otherwise they play through you and you get into trouble,” Jungwirth said. “It was our game plan to try to press them, and we had some good transitions, but we know we have to improve some things in the following weeks.”
Obviously, a team can’t play a sustained press for 90 minutes, but together, the players need to be more organized when it is utilized. And on the flip side, when opponents put them on their back foot, the Quakes need to respond and not just react, with a lead or without it.
“That’s also quite normal in a game that when you score an early goal and they put pressure, so it was absolutely not the purpose in the game plan,” Stahre said. “We tried to press them high, that was really clear, but they played well also. They put us in trouble. We tried to press them high, but we couldn’t in the first half. We made small changes in the shape and talked about it at halftime, and we were much better in the second half.”
Better was good, but not good enough. San Jose travels to Philadelphia this weekend to play the Union, also on the losing end last Saturday in a 3-0 loss at Colorado. The Earthquakes road woes are well documented, but in a game against one of the weaker Eastern Conference foes, they have a chance to show they are taking positive steps to improve defensively.