If you look at the supporters shield as being on reverse and being the wooden spoon, we are crushing it!
Surprised? There is a long, established history of EQ brass being all over the place early in the season and then...
I like reading about what it takes to start up a pro soccer team. Peter Wilt is starting one in Madison, WI and gives some interesting insights in this interview. It also struck me that the Quakes have not followed this approach very much, i.e., getting community support, attracting the Mexican fan base (other than the recent WC viewing parties), setting affordable ticket prices, picking an area that is easy to get to and even walkable, etc... I suppose the other new teams trying to start up in the bay area aren't following Peter Wilt's playbook either... but i found his plan interesting. https://madison.com/ct/news/local/g...cle_75c980d8-65bd-5589-8945-12956a548440.html
In the eyes of the world though, this small team drew Man United which is one of the best teams in the world. On paper, this is good for the club...... Manchester United vs San Jose Earthquakes . Alexis Sanchez can't inspire Man United in draw with San Jose ... San Jose Earthquakes San Jose Earthquakes SAN Alexis Sanchez, Manchester United Play to 0-0 Draw vs. San Jose ... Alexis Sánchez shines but Manchester United held by San Jose ... Manchester United 0-0 San Jose Earthquakes, RESULT: Jose ...
I remember when we were worried an 18k stadium was going to be too small. Imagine how smareaaaimg something 22-24k would have looked. 15k actually made more sense
OTOH the team has not executed well in order to better fill the stadium. It's been poor signings (Innocent, anyone - he was our big new stadium splash signing :-( ), anal retentive soccer (hi, Dom), insufficient incorporation of more exciting young players (#freetommy), only one "barely" playoffs in 4 years, etc.
In terms of stadium location, this is MLS and California, in perhaps the most expensive place to build anything. You take what you can get. Plus, maybe it's not right downtown, but it's hardly difficult to get to. Now, affordable tickets and attracting fanbases, those things the team has more control over. Although the best way to attract fans is to win, they just aren't capable of putting an actual team on the field. Otherwise, I think they do a good job of trying to incorporate the various cultural communities in the area. I'd not really get excited about targeting a specific group over others or signing players specifically to entice a certain demographic. Seems like you artificially cap your potential fanbase that way. All their problems will be solved if they ever figure out their core business, which is soccer ops. We aren't seeing improvements there, sadly.
It's hard to put Wondo's collective statements together and make complete sense of them. I think to some degree he believes in his teammates but feels that they're not getting the job done. And yet at the same time he blames Jesse for how the roster was composed. I guess one could reconcile his preseason statement as a gross miscalculation. In any case I think it's odd that somehow the coaching staff is absolved in Wondo's comments (e.g. #stahrein) as that is the one thing that has significantly changed since last year. I mean you can put out a starting lineup this year that is nearly the same as last year's, and I'm not sure you wouldn't actually be improved this year (e.g. a healthy Lima for Sarkodie, Cummings for a 35-year old Muma).
To be fair, he was speaking after the game last night and "we're" could be shortened from "we were" rather that "we are." But it's not like those are mutually exclusive...
"We're" is a contraction of "we are", not "we were". Of course he could have just kind of slurred his words and meant "we were". I think the difference is actually pretty important, but w/o seeing the context of the statements, I don't know for sure which one he meant. "We are not good enough" indicates a kind of giving up - it's just useless, we are not good enough (similar to Flo's statements). "We were not good enough" is just, well, we didn't do it tonight, we'll have to better the next game.
On paper they should absolutely be improved over last year, which is why their free fall leaves little guess work on where the blame lies. It's one thing to be a bit worse than the year before, and it's another to disintegrate entirely. The relationship is so direct, you'd have to think this whole thing was on purpose, but to what effect is anyone's guess. The real answer is that Fioranelli talks a good game, but that's it, and Stahre is the likely the dumbest human being in pro soccer.
Yeah, and where was this big "roster isn't good enough to compete" narrative for Dom and for Leitch? They were always held responsible for the team's results, at least at some level. Everyone understands that you can always have better players, but we expected them to be able to deliver a competitive team regardless.
I mean, if you're talking about conversations here on the board, plenty of people have complained about the roster for years. I can't recall the number of posts about Shaun Francis alone that I read. If you're talking about comments from players like Jungwirth, and such, yeah, I can't really remember the team openly criticizing each other like this. That also goes to show you just how awful Stahre is. It's his job to get everyone on the same page. That's his most important job, and he has failed at it in ways I didn't think were possible. I do have to give Kinnear credit in how he dealt with criticism. He rarely criticized players openly (though I do recall one incident that was a bit unkind) and I can't remember Leitch ever making much in the way of any kind of public statements. But ultimately, the roster could be doing more than it is. It's being led by the worst active coach in the league (among a great number of pretty bad coaches). Without a complete overhaul of the roster, and I mean, like, starting from absolute scratch, I see no way that Stahre works himself out of this match. This is one of those things where if I'm wrong, I would love nothing more.