Post-match: Vancouver Whitecaps FC - San Jose Earthquakes (Saturday, 5/5) postgame thread [R]

This loss is no big deal, nobody goes 34-1-1 in a season...

Another point about tired legs....One additional topic on this, is that tired legs are amplified on artificial turf. If you aren't sharp and crisp, it will show, and it did.

Pro Soccer should be played on real living grass.

Again, you are making a lot of presumptions about a player just because you "haven't seen them" do this or that. We don't know how well Garza would play possession or defense because he hasn't played long enough for us to find out. As far as I know, he's been playing outside midfield for the Quakes, and reports indicate that he is making a very good account for himself in the reserve games, kinda like #8 did . At this point it doesn't really matter that he was a forward in college, as he has been training and playing as an outside mid for the Quakes.

That's a very revealing comment because it indicates a defensive / play not to lose mentality. Even if you are trying to win possession, possession is not everything if you are trying to win the game. The problem is that the Quakes had a bunch of possession-oriented guys in there with tired legs, and no attacking players. Garza would have given them at least one guy who is going to run at the defense and pressure them. At the end, the wings were effectively Khari and Wondo, both slow and with tired legs. That's just not going to work.

yallop didn't do what he said he was going to do in playing the bench, he went with the same group of guys over the 3 games and they were all tired at different levels.

we killed a potential attacking sub on hernandez when hernandez probably shouldn't of started as he's been obviously nursing an injury for awhile now (didn't he get subbed out on wed too?). granted ike has been shaky but knowing you are giving up a sub on the back line going into a game is never good if you want to win said game. with hernandez & corrales banged up, bernadez out for the next month that doesn't leave too many options for us back there....doyle?

our midfield was over run for basically the whole game. having moreno start would of set a better tone of possesion and perhaps things would of been different. if not having moreno start they could of put him in at the half to snap them out of it.

bad job of game management in this one.

Well, considering MLS has a 34 game regular season, yeah, no team can have a 34-1-1 record.

I'd say you are the one making presumptions, not me. Until they have proven they can get the job done, you shouldn't go around complaining about how player x or player y should have been subbed in in that situation. The only evidence you have is some word of mouth from reserve games, which Yallop has seen first hand. As I recall, the word of mouth was just that Garza did a good job running at players, not that he was particularly sharp in possession & build-up or tackling & marking. Khari and Moreno on the other hand are proven and reliable.

My guesstimation is if Garza came in we would have lost even more of the midfield battle and Vancouver would have scored the go-ahead goal sooner. He may have had 1 or 2 nice runs down the wing but they wouldn't have resulted in anything b/c he's inexperienced and inconsistent. He wouldn't have seen the ball much b/c we would've been busy getting dominated by Vancouver in the midfield.

As it is we would've had a 2-1 win if Wondo finishes the open sitter off the free kick and Opara doesn't make a juvenile error in the last minute. Yallop made the right calls and put our boys in a possession to succeed, the ball just didn't bounce our way.

That was a function of Salinas/Chavez being hurt and Dawkins being tired and subbed out. Also I think the wings were Baca and Wondo not Khari and Wondo.

Nope. I'm saying "let's see what he can do. We've seen a little bit and he looks like a good attacking player". You are the one who is presuming that he is not good with possession and defense with no real evidence. At least I'm working with a little bit of data, based on his previous appearance in an MLS match.

And whether his attacking play would result in the go-ahead goal or whether your presumed loss of possession and defense would result in a Vancouver goal, we don't know. What we do know (I think) is that the Garza sub would be more of an attack-minded / go for the win sub, and less of a conservative "try to not to lose" move. Vancouver is a pretty good team, but they are not Barca. The match was fairly even. Why not go for the win?

BTW, Yallop lacks so much confidence in Garza that he considered starting him on the right against RSL

Yeah, this.

I didn't think that we played that horribly. We made some mistakes, we did resort to more longballs than I would have liked. But ultimately, it came down to the ref allowing a boat load of fouls from Wankouver that any honest ref would have called. The yellows on Beta and Chávez ... sure, you can justify those, but why did the Whitecraps get away with grabbing Beta's arm repeatedly? Like ten or twelve times? The Whitecraps tripped several of our guys from behind and got away with no calls. This was a disgrace.

OK, the game itself. I wasn't as peed at Frank as some of you. Yeah, I'd have made different subs, Garza for Chávez for certain. Frank pretty much had to bring on Opara for Jason, so we can't complain about that. Did Dawkins have to go out? Some of you thought he was gassed, so who would we have brought on instead? OK, Dawkins went out at the 63rd minute, so put on Garza then. Then when Chávez got injured, we bring on ... Moreno? maybe? We didn't have a lot of options. If we had left Dawkins on and subbed Sercan for Lenhart would Dawkins have been totally flagged and useless by the end of the match?

Also, it's kind of hard to play a good game when the otherside get to foul you with impunity.

Oh, and I have to mention that Hasli (was he really onside? I don't think so.) scored at the 93rd minute, in 94 minutes of stoppage time. The Whitecraps celebration carried on longer that is normal, but I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is that when we were finally allowed to kick off, the ref blew the final whistle almost immediately. He cheated us out of any chance of a comeback. He blew off nearly a minute of stoppage time, and he did that so that the Whitecraps would win. That's shit.

We had some chances that we should have finished early, which would make a lot of this academic. We looked good for most of the first half. Our guys were tired, so maybe we should have started different guys? Perhaps Sercan to start? Maybe start with Garza and Chávez on the wings? I can't really single anyone out as playing badly. We made a few critical errors, but it was only here and there. And again, with a decent ref, we get a least a tie out of that. The Whitecaps would either have had to dial back their crappiness, or they'd have finished the match with ten.

I'm pissed, but mostly at the ref, who clearly screwed us.

GOOOOO QUAAAAAAKES!!!!!

- Mark

The match wasn't very even in my eyes, by the second half they were blowing by us up and down the field. We were gassed, and they weren't, regardless of what we think of their B team playing the Edmonton Eskimos. Lenhart was receiving the ball 1 on 5 with only Wondo in the camera frame.

Sercan looks like a Wondo backup, poaching with little size or speed.
You say "We don't know how well Garza would play possession or defense because he hasn't played long enough for us to find out", but like a lot of others on this board you are not respecting the fact that Frank has seen him plenty, it's only internet posters who haven't. Obviously he thinks Khari is superior, especially in a end game lockdown situation, and I don't have reason to doubt him.

We have a tremendous 16 man rotation, the envy of the league. That's all the depth any team can realistically hope for.

I saw Garza play in a preseason game, and he was good. He's very fast, he combines well with other players, and has good awareness of where his teammates are. I only saw clips of him playing defense (or maybe it was just other fans reports?) But he is said to have done well playing defense, so we should have some confidence that he would not be a defensive liability.

Sure, he's likely to make mistakes, but we need to start working him in at some point.

And I don't really fault Frank's starting lineup or subs. Injuries have taken their toll on our roster, as well as three games in one week. Khari had an off game previously, so I'd have been less excited about playing him, but again, it's hard to fault the decision to do so. Oh, my reason for using Garza as a sub at least is that I wanted more speed on the pitch. The Whitecraps have some speedy players, so I would have tried to counter that with speed and Garza is much, much faster than Khari.

Wild speculation on your part. And you might be right, except that we know that Garza is OK as a defender, so I'm sure he'd track back and try to win the ball back. As it is, we lost a lot of the midfield because Khari is slow.

Yeah, and we got screwed by the ref too. Had he called a few more of Wankouver's fouls, had he shown them another yellow card or two, as they richly deserved, it would have changed the game a lot, and we'd have gotten a tie.

Yeah, we had Wondo playing the right mid spot at the end. And I agree that our guys were tired, and that the roster is thin because of injuries. Sure, that's all true. It's also true that the ref totally changed the game by allowing endless fouls by the Whitecraps. They committed a ton of professional fouls. Had the ref handed out a couple of more yellows to them, they'd have dialed it back, and we would have had a lot more possession.

GO QUAKES!!!

- Mark

Yeah, he was onside because Opara was daydreaming while the back line was pulled up on a slow target man.

Umm, Hassli scored at 93:57, fresh rant requested.

If we start different guys, we cease to be the Earthquakes and become "random MLS B side". The tired A team at least was seconds from a draw on the road at a 5-2-2 side.

That's why you should sub in someone with fresh legs, not guys who played a full 90 a few days previous, or guy who played lots of minutes a few days ago and is 34 years old and slow.

Hah, then we should never question anything Frank does, because obviously he knows more than we do. Shut down the forum!! .

Why stop there when you may be leaving more on the table? Yallop has said that he considered starting Garza against RSL, so obviously he likes what he sees. Garza is the #6! player taken in the draft. He should be able to see the field for longer than 8 minutes.

Hasli goal - onside, the first goal - offside. There was a guy on the far post who was offside by a body width when the free kick was struck.

You don't just throw warm bodies out there just b/c they are fresh. Should we have thrown Ampai out there in that situation? What if we had Sealy still on the roster? At a certain point a 1st stringer on 3 days rest is a better sub than a 2nd/3rd stringer with fresh legs.

We reached big time for Garza. The most trustworthy rankings I saw had him at around pick #20. He played forward in college, so it's going to take more than a couple of reserve matches for him to adjust and learn how to play RM at a major-leage level on both sides of the ball. He's a nice talent I just expect he's going to take some work before he's ready for some serious minutes (as opposed to, say, the guy we should have drafted with the 6 pick, Nick DeLeon, who can come right in and start at a major league level - gee, wouldn't it be nice to have him on the team right now with Chavez and Salinas out?).

Opara was doing this the entire time he was in... playing too far back and making risky runs forward in anticipation of cutting off a pass. He needs to play better with the defensive unit.

Dawkins was playing very little defense and that was a problem in this game. Lots of folks looked gassed in the second half. Regardless Vancouver out played us and won... I have no problem with that.

We know that Sealy is not very good at all. You can't just dump all 2nd/3rd string players into the same bucket. That doesn't make any sense. Funny you should mention Ampai though because he came in and helped spark the team last year. Garza is ahead of him on the depth chart now, so one might reasonably think that he'd do even better than Ampai. I think what the team needed at that point is more of a Garza player to provide speed and pressure the defense with the ball, as they had lost that with Chavez and Dawkins out. Ampai is more of a Baca type of player who helps direct the offense from the middle but does not press the attack that much.

I don't care about "trustworthy rankings". What were the "trustworthy rankings" on Wondo and Beitashour coming out of college, or even Morrow for that matter? Really, I don't place value on a player according to "trustworthy rankings" of the draft.

You've already been corrected on both points, but I just have to add that this kind of nonsense just makes you (and us collectively, if non-Quakes fans check in here) look silly.

Here's something that some of you may not have had a chance to see. Our final preseason game vs Chivas USA in the tournament at Jeld-Wen. This is my last impression of seeing Garza and Guvenisik playing. Guvenisik had a goal and an assist, but the assist is what impressed me the most. Watch the last goal sequence, beginning at about 2:30:

^Exactly.

But nah, let's just listen to SJTillIDie.

All that shows is that they can take advantage offensively of some second stringers in the 88th minute of what was already a 4-0 preseason thrashing by that point, in a game in which we were dominating possession.

My point is that neither of those guys are as good as Khari and Moreno at playing in the midfield (winning the ball, covering, tackling, passing, making the smart "soccer brain" decisions in possession, etc.).

I still like Sercan and Garza and I think they can contribute to this team, they just were not the proper moves to make in that particular situation last Saturday. Yallop made the right call.

You don't know that, and your insistence that "Yallop made the right call" is based on nothing. How do you know he made the right call when you don't have the alternate scenario to compare it to? None of us know what putting Garza or Sercan or Ring onto the field would have been like on Saturday. But I'd be willing to bet any of them could have provided more to the team - offensively and defensively - than putting in Khari did. The problem is instead of going for the win, Yallop played to not lose - a strategy that doomed us to failure again and again and again last season. Yallop made the call to play for a tie and we lost because of it.

Yeah, and it worked great!!

We do much better when we just jam the foot on the throttle and push for goals. Defensively I don't think we have the discipline at this time to play for the tie. Let's just play to our strengths and outscore the bastards. It's also makes for much better soccer watching.

Yes, we do much better in tie games when we push for goals. So does everyone else.
You are confusing cause and effect.
Teams push for goals in tie games when they are superior on the day to their opponents, that's why it's successful so often.
Had we "pushed for goals" on Saturday, odds are the Caps would have put a couple past us without even requiring a last-second Opara brain fart. Because we were inferior at that point.

The other day I called "Heads". Boy was that stupid!

http://itmightbedangerous.blogspot.com/2008/06/draft-review-about-process.html