He's So Wondo! The continuing chronicle of Chris Wondolowski's career

While he seemed like a nice guy, and smart too, based on his color commentary work, he should not have been playing over Wondo. In 2006, the year ERo calls out as the year there was supposedly no room for Wondo in the lineup, Moreno scored 3 goals in 2600-something minutes. Wondo would have scored 3 goals for that team blindfolded and drunk, in about 3 games.

 

I've really enjoyed Moreno as a commentator, too.

 

There's a reason why Commentator Moreno constantly makes references to "my kind of range."

Put another way, it was rare that he had occasion to put the ball where his grandmother hangs her spider eggs. Or words to that effect.

 

This is barely about Wondo but his name is in the title, so...

Wondo and Co – Amobi Okugo – Medium

 

With his goal tonight, Chris Wondolowski now has the 2nd most goals all time in MLS with 135 (passed Jeff Cunningham, 10 away from Donovan) and tied Jaime Moreno for most goals with a single club (131)

 

As I was watching the game against KC last night , I was wondering how much longer it would take for Wondo to score. Sadly him losing the ball in midfield lead to Sportings last goal I believe.

Only 10 away from LAndy! Go Wondo!

 

His turnover definitely started the sequence, at the same time it was 50 yards away from the goal so a bunch of other people didn't exactly help either by the time the ball hit the back of the net.

A couple minutes before he scored, he tried that cross back into the box from a position he used to shoot from 99% of the time up until like last season... assists are good but there's a time and place to shoot and that was one of them. At least he got the goal with 4+ minutes left in the game so there was actually still a chance for something to happen and I think there was one more look at goal for the team after that, but mostly KC getting corner kicks.

He's looking like Wondo looks, it will be a successful season I think.

 

I don't like this train of thought where a guy turns the ball over once, and 5 passes later they score, and people blame the guy who made the turnover. It happens. Magnus had 4 or 5 turnovers in the Quakes end, so arguably he was more of a liability in that regard than Wondo was.

 

Actually, just watched the replay and it's not like it was a great pass (from Shea?) to Wondo, rifled at him chest high, he tries to bring it down with a foot but it wasn't like he had possession already and gave it up. Well anyway all 3 KC goals were filled with Quake mistakes, oh well.

 

Discuss: Will Chris Wondolowski break the MLS scoring record this year?

 

Donovan on Wondolowski passing his MLS scoring record: "It's inevitable"

“When you look at Wondo’s career and how he’s done it, it’s incredible,” Donovan said. “For five or six or seven years, he didn’t really play. And then all of a sudden he came onto the scene and scored 15, 18, 20, 25 goals a year for however many years now. He deserves it. It’s going to happen at some point.”

Donovan admitted that it was hard, from an ego standpoint, to watch Wondolowski creep closer to his league mark and Clint Dempsey tie his US national team record of 57 goals. But knowing both those players as US teammates and fellow MLS stars helped to soften the blow.

“The human part of you wants them to do well,” Donovan said. “Getting to know [Wondolowski] as a human being, he’s just a nice, happy, joyful guy. So you want him to succeed.”

There was plenty of respect to go around Friday, when Wondolowski called Donovan the “greatest American player” and Donovan lauded Wondolowski’s ability to make himself indispensable to a Quakes side that has employed six different coaches (including interim office-holders) since 2013.

“The league’s changed so much from when he first came in and he keeps adapting and making it impossible to take him off the field,” Donovan said. “He deserves so much credit for that. That’s not easy. … I think it’s a credit to how hard he’s worked, because there was a time early in his career where you never, ever would have imagined that this would be possible. I’m happy for him.”

 

LAndy is right about one thing. No one other than maybe Doyle believed in him. We all knock John as a GM but he discovered and found Wondo and he deserves credit for that. Neither Dom or Frank really believed in him. Frank from 2008-2010 was just looking for players and the right combinations and who would or wouldn’t fit. Dom had Wondo for three or four years and finally gave up on him for Cam Weaver.

As far as anyone ever matching what Wondo has done , it will probably be another 10-15 years before another miracle player like him emerges. A player like him comes maybe once or twice in a lifetime. It’s sad that the Quakes haven’t been able to reward him with a great team during his prime years. Although there is still time for Wondo to win a trophy , time is growing short. Hope the Quakes win it for him this year!

 

Doyle was not GM when the Quakes signed Wondo in 2005. As for 2009 Doyle readily admits he had no idea that Wondo would turn into Wondo. In fact at one season ticket holder gathering he laughed about it, like sure I knew it all along. What made the trade doable for him is that he'd really soured on Cam Weaver, and had even made a disparaging remark or two about him publicly. That, and Dom being interested in Cam due to his size. "He's a handful!", he said at the time.

 

Doyle was the assistant coach in 2005. Regardless , of whether he knew Wondo was going to turn into a great goalscorer or not, he remembered him from his days as as leading goalscorer of the Quakes reserve team, the Mustangs academy and that is why he signed him. He will have never went after him had he not known anything about him.

Whichever way you twist or turn it, John Doyle deserves all the credit for that Wondo trade. I seriously have my doubts Wondo would have turned into the scoring machine he became had he stayed in Houston. I’m almost sure given Dom’s team at the time , with DeRo and Ching, he will have been a reserve that he was for 4/5 years.

Obviously, he saw something and thus , that is why he called Kinnear and asked to trade Weaver for him. Whatever everyone feels personally about Doyle , he is the sole reason for making the Weaver for Wondo trade and he should get all the accolades for it.

 

Sure, Doyle knew about Wondo and liked him, and deserves credit for making the trade, but by his own admission he had no idea he'd turn into "Wondo". And in fact when Wondo joined the Quakes he was about 4th on the depth chart at forward. It wasn't until a couple of injuries at the forward position that Wondo got a chance. Let's face it, nobody knew. I don't even know if Wondo knew. I think he believed he'd be successful, but the extent of it I'm sure surprised even himself.

As for who initiated the trade talks, we don't know for sure. Was it Doyle calling Dom and asking about Wondo, or Kinnear calling Doyle and asking about Weaver? I tend to think it was the latter but that is just a guess based on things I've read. This was Kinnear's mindset on seeking out Cam Weaver. He was looking for an "aerial threat" to cover for Ching's absence.

“With the possibility of Brian (Ching) missing quite a bit of time through injury and international play, it’s not bad having another guy (Weaver) who plays similar to him,” coach Dominic Kinnear said of the forward-for-forward swap.

Ching, the team’s premier target forward, will miss the next two matches, including tonight’s against Chivas USA, with a hamstring injury.

Weaver, 25, is 6-4 and 195 pounds, making him an aerial threat.

 

Of course he didn’t know. No one knew. Wondo is a once in a lifetime freak of nature and a miracle. None of the high priced superstars that came into the league since the Beckham signing could ever match what he has done.

I’m pretty sure Doyle called Dom more than once for players. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because they knew each other. John and Frank both knew Dom and in 08/09 they both needed all the help they could get and were making trades and signing free agents trying to find players to help the last place expansion teams cause. Houston was one of the the best teams in the league both years while the Quakes were the worst.

Just look at some of the players who came and went in those seasons....Francisco Lima, Nick Garcia , Hucks, André Luiz, Quincy, Grabavoy, Pablo Campos, Ronnie O’Brien Davide Somma, Cornell Glen, Salinas, Gavin Glinton and Scott Sealy. Wondo didn’t turn it on until August of 2009.

 

That's true, our forwards were pretty weak in those days. That kind of goes to show you that while the Quakes liked Wondo, they didn't think enough of him to make him a starter initially, even amidst a pretty mediocre group. He was 3rd or 4th on the depth chart back then. I'm wracking my brain trying to remember who could have been ahead of him. I think it was RJ (who actually somehow scored 11 goals that year), and Cornell Glen. And then we still had Quincy, Davide Somma, and a guy named Mario Fiorini?, whom I don't remember. He shows up on wikipedia, but can't find any other reference to him.

 

Yeah Ryan Johnson kept running north and he made some noise from 08-10 then got the hook midseason 2011.....

 

He had a weird career. He wound up playing a lot of left mid for the Quakes in 2010 because he couldn't score anymore. And then his career continued to be kind of uneven after that. After some mediocre years in MLS, he went to Portland in 2013, his last year in MLS, and had a real productive year. Weird. I guess you could say he was streaky?

 

Wondo was brought in and played midfielder at first. Don’t give Doyle that much credit for bringing in what he thought was a midfielder who would turn out to be our best scorer.

 

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/18/its-still-a-process-quakes-wondo-says-of-getting-benched/

 

I can't remember when the last time anyone said that about Wondo.

 

I would be fine with Wondo moving to a sub role if the Quakes had truly built a better team/system, by way of players clearly superior to Wondo.

This just seems predictable, the same old push for mediocrity, while trying to bullshjt us that it's something better than that. We've had one thing better than mediocre, one thing that was always genuine quality to celebrate, and that's Wondo.

 

Merci

 

I agree that Wondo is the Quakes' finest player over the last decade, indeed the league's finest player over its entire history. Wondo is worthy of every superlative, including a larger than life statute out front of Avaya and a write-in vote for President. He should never be traded.

But at this point in his career, the Quakes should experiment with him in a substitution role, and that experiment should continue.