Its true and you are right. I do believe he did in fact want to be a part of it but I think Doyle told Lew to lose him and have him worry about the A's baseball team as opposed to the Quakes and that is pretty much what happened.
"Q&A: Catching up with second-year midfielder JJ Koval" (SJEarthquakes.com - Friday, 1/23/15) GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Congrats to J.J. Koval for winning this year's Bedard Award from SSV Community Foundation as the Quakes' most community-oriented player!
I hope this little bit of training at least helped to re-energize JJK. We all had high hopes for him at the start of last year, but then everything went to shit. So hopefully JJK, and everyone else, are able to recover their respective mojos. This bit sounded good to me: Hopefully, this helped. JJK with his mojo restored and back to his more technical, less negative conservative play would be excellent! Damn. I want to go to Portugal now. Lisboa is great, and I loved Porto, which reminded me of SF, sort of. More colorfull, but foggy and rainy in the summer. And if you could imagine SF with Napa just the other side of a shorter Golden Gate Bridge. Porto is freaking great! Damn. I need to go back and drink lots more port. Go Quakes!! - Mark
Yes, Portugal is really very much like California in terms of geography, climate, and cultural split, it's a natural fit for anyone familiar with California! In the north is Porto and the wine region, is colder/foggier, greener. (SF/NorCal) In the south is Lisbon which is the cultural/media center, sunnier. (LA/SoCal) You can even throw in the Algarve as your San Diego Also interesting for those who don't know, Lisbon's bridge is a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, kind of strange to see with the GGB being so iconic/associated with SF. I've been there as well, fond memories.
JJ Koval "won" today's beep test. @QuakesForever JJ. 2nd year in a row— Adam Jahn (@AdamJahn14) January 27, 2015
Join us in congratulating JJ & Karli Koval on tying the knot this past weekend! 👰💍📷: @TDodsonPhoto pic.twitter.com/UnXbbCOXxK— San Jose Earthquakes (@SJEarthquakes) January 4, 2016 GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
I want to see JJK get back that spark we all liked in '14. We're going to need JJ as a backup to our central mids: Godoy, Pelosi, and Alashe. I think he has the raw talent to rise to at least that level. It would be good for him, and for us too. Go Quakes!! - Mark
If we had our own USL team we could have had him play on that and work on his game. Instead another draft pick we couldn't build up to its potential.
Isn't that what Sac is for? He played for two managers who favour heavily the 'bucket' with a defensive minded mindsets, and yet he still couldn't grow his game. Sorry for him but it's the truth.
just not that good at drafting field players.........I guess thats why we dropped back and punted on a GK, cant really screw that up......right?
By mid-2014 I already thought the Quakes selection of Koval was so perplexing that it prompted me to take a look at all their recent draft picks.... The Earthquakes and the MLS Draft This most recently came back up in the 2016 Superdraft thread so I'll post my comment from there: Even just a few months ago some people were still making the "well he looked good against Toluca" argument, as if that means anything It's almost like three seasons worth of MLS games are more meaningful than ONE GAME in CCL from early 2014.... It ends as it was always destined to end, with Koval being waived because he's not good enough for MLS.
Sorry but some view all these subpar roster filler guys on the Quakes with rose tinted glasses, and this isn't the only time. I don't know how you're unable to see the blatantly obvious when evaluating talent, sorry if I hurt your feelings by pointing it out. Maybe try being more objective next time? "You got one right" I'm pretty sure I got Sebastian "proven failure" Lletget right as well... And Adam Jahn, whose physical transformation last offseason impressed you so much... Oh here are back to back comments regarding Mike Fucito from 2014: More Fucito nonsense When you're even praising Mike freaking Fucito, there might be no level of suck that you can't see in a positive light. Well, unfortunately in the real world that doesn't help at all. Imagining that Mike Fucito or Adam Jahn or JJ Koval are quality soccer players isn't magically going to turn them into quality soccer players.
Having been around a long time...everyone gets some right and some wrong. But there's often the issue with the younger players, particularly the draft picks, of who can be the late bloomers. I don't they seem all that young compared with how young certain players in other leagues are first team ready. But for this country, they're still young players. A lot of people were eager to run Quincy out of town and eventually he game good. Also some players are just not good fits for system and Kinnear didn't draft Koval--although as been pointed out previously by someone, Koval's issue isn't related to the system which should have suited him. I think there's a truism about MLS draft vs other American league drafts, it's never bad drafting that puts a team in the basement. It's just simply not critical enough for player acquisition.
I will make absolutely no apologies whatsoever for being able to see the positives in players, even the fringe players, and I stand 100% behind everything I wrote about them. If you actually looked at all my posts about these players instead of just cherry picking all the way back to 2014 in order to build your strawman, you'd see some + and some -, certainly for Jahn and JJK. For JJK, mostly negative for a couple of years now. For Jahn, pretty strongly negative from the start, mostly about lack of speed and aggressiveness, but I appreciated the fact that he put in the effort to change his body significantly last offseason, doing everything he can to give himself a better chance of making it. It is not exactly rocket science to predict that nothing will come of these fringe players' careers - these players who you claim "suck" so badly. Nothing comes of most MLS fringe players' careers. But even fringe players in MLS have good parts to their games. Otherwise they would never make any team. Fucito played in the league for 6 years, for a few teams, and several managers. So they were all so dumb that they kept a player who according to you has some kind of infinite level of "suck"? I guess we should just take your advice on all draft and roster decisions, because you have such an incredible eye for talent! I hear Stolz is tearing it up for the New York Red Bull II. Oh wait, he's been released altogether. Nevermind.
Anyone who thinks judging athletic talent is blatantly obvious is incapable of judging athletic talent. You think because Dom Kinnear cuts someone the player necessarily is incapable of playing in MLS? Dom Kinnear is the same guy who traded Wondo for Cam Weaver.
Give me a break. The guy is 25 years old and just graduated. He was already a professional when he enrolled at UCLA... UCLA's Leo Stolz named college soccer's top player
Well he may have been a "professional" when he entered college but he doesn't appear to be anymore. And not only did NYRB pass on him, every other team apparently did as well. I believe he was in the waiver draft this year. I'm guessing he's looking at a career change at this point. Maybe he can work for Mike Fucito's new company and over lunch Mike can tell him what it's like to actually play a minute in an MLS game. Or he could call his buddy JJ Koval and ask about it.
I'm sure he was. He was over 20 when he started UCLA in 2011, 2 & 1/2 years older than the any other freshman....Looking at wiki, he was playing for 1860 Munich at least since 04. Back to the thread, I guess great minds think alike! Who would have thought? Finalmente!