Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Minnesota United FC (Saturday, 3/7) postgame thread [R]

There weren't a lot of tears shed here when we traded away Opara. Remember, he was the guy that broke his foot (twice?) just running. It's not like we got rid of two proven all-star defenders, (Morrow and Beita). Opara was raw and unproven, and more importantly, injury prone. Good for him that his career turned around, but, in this case, hindsight is 20-20.

 

You mean the guy that scored?

 

I was never in favor of getting rid of him. He's an athletic freak, probably the most athletic guy the Quakes (and perhaps the entire league) have had in the past dozen years. You don't jettison someone like him because he's periodically on the shelf.

 

Too much saalry not in the starting 11.
Wondo -800k?
Flo-616k
Lopez-387k
Judson-305k
Fierro- probably at least 500k

Not saying all these players should be starting or on the field, just could be money better spent.

 

OK, I read all the previous posts. I wasn't happy after the first game draw against Toronto, as I thought we equalized against the run of play...

And today, we were demolished by a much better team we play again (on the road) in three weeks. No way we win that game, unless...

Almeyda makes some massive changes, because the lineup we are fielding just isn't working.

1) Rios can't be our sole Forward. He was invisible tonight and present on one play (the goal he scored) in game one. We need a forward who other teams worry about. And that is not Rios in a single forward formation (which we play).

The only forward we have like that is Wondo (and yes I know he is 36 years old)

2) Hoesen is not a left winger. If you want to play him (and I do), he needs to be a second forward.

3) Vako needs to play on the left wing! Not as a withdrawn forward.

4) Judson needs to be the defensive midfielder, so that -

5) Yueill can be our attacking midfielder.

6) Jungwirth needs to start in place of Kashia

7) Vega is no longer a starting goalie, give the job to JT or trade for someone else. At least two of Minnesota's goals tonight were soft.

So pretty much an abysmal management of the roster so far this year.

Add to that the completely disastrous management of the roster this year, assuming that one more year of familiarity with the systems was going to make us play-off caliber, was completely bogus. BOGUS. We added one new player and that was not enough.

Fire Jesse! Fire Almeyda. And let's start the rebuilding now. Because rebuild we need to do. THERE WILL NOT BE A PLAYOFF GAME FOR THE EARTHQUAKES THIS YEAR, OR PERHAPS ANY YEAR ALMEYDA IS THE COACH. WE ARE BOTTOM-FEEDERS FOR THE ELITE TEAMS OF MLS TO FEED OFF OF.

I only have one wish for this year, can we at least beat the Filth at Stanford?

 

On the Benny and Sal podcast Ike explained that he absolutely hated his time in San Jose. I’m not sure it was the Quakes fault , it sounded like he just had his own issues and was never going to be happy here. IIRC, he was living in a terrible motel room (drug dealers and prostitutes apparently), he ate subway every day and didn’t drive. I got the feeling the Quakes would never have been able to keep him and even if they had he would never have performed well in those circumstances.

 

They look bad this year. Good chance we’ll beat them.

 

Du ma. Only 2 weeks in and here we go with the Vako hate again.

He scored a goal for God's sake. He was trying all game to break in but Minny had so many people in the box, he was constantly double-teamed. Just like the previous seasons, everyone know he's the best player on our team. Double up on Vako, and most likely we will lose.

Let's concentrate on the players that didn't do their job tonight. How about that Kashia guy? Or that goalie of ours? Or Espinoza with his shit shot and crosses to nowhere? Or Magnus who backpasses like nobody's business? Or Mister Pelado who trots out a roster where half of the players are not in their natural skilled position.

Let's lay off Vako for at least one more week, can we do that? C'mon, let's try!

 

All of these things are attributable to the penuriousness of the Quakes. Everybody knew that a low-end MLS salary was insufficient ten years ago to survive on in Silicon Valley, and I don't think the Quakes did much, if anything for the young players on the team to help them out and make it possible for them to have at least a reasonable standard of living...

Good thing we don't have cheeeep owners anymore....

 

I'm happy for Ike, he got out of a shithole team.

 

The postgame press conference comments are trickling in from Twitter, and I think Pelado is the one who is most checked-out right now. Some of his answers are downright cringey....

 

Also, we never replaced Godoy. If Judson is recovering from an injury I think Godoy or a suitable replacement would have done better than Magnus in that role.

 

Embarrassing. Maybe they should have played the game in an empty stadium.

You let a CB score two goals on you and draw another penalty? We never learned the lesson. Put two guys on Ike if one didn’t work the first one or two times.

We have absolutely no aerial game in defense and offense.

Every corner kick against us is like penalty kick. We gave up 4 goals in two games directly and indirectly due to corner kicks. Unbelievable! Did they practice any dead ball situation?

Almeyda needs to stop the Rios/Hoesen and Magnus/Yueill experiment before anyone starts the Fire Almeyda thread here. It is not working. Put Wondo and Judson back on the field. Also we need Flo’s leadership at the back. Overall we lack drive and urgency with the starting lineup these two games.

 

This.

 

To elaborate, Rios is not a #9 and Hoesen and Cowell’s size are wasted out wide. Put Hoesen up top or play the kid there. He looks hella promising by the way.

Put Judson at 6 to free up Yueill and add some range to the midfield.

probably put Vako out wide.

play Rios, Wondo, Erickson or even Vako at 10.

 

Jungwirth NEEDS to start over Keisha. And while Vega was good at times last year, might be time to just move on.

Alanis is good. Thomlson had a good game. But the team had way too many lapses. And why is Wondo marking Opara on a corner ???

 

Really disappointing to see such an easy tap in after Vega saved that penalty. Completely uncontested

 

I was really bummed to see the same attackers that struggled in the home opener. The Rios/Errickson/ Vako thing doesn't scare anybody at all...totally anemic. Pushes Danny out wide, where he is really struggling right now...Why did Almeyda move Vako into the middle? It's a really poor fit for ball movement and he isn't even close to playing enough defense for Almeyda's system. with Vako, Errickson and Yueill as the shielding 6 our midfield is marshmallow soft up the gut...If he's healthy Judson absolutely has to be the 6...if it means benching Mag then so be it. We're a defensive mess right now. Like I said after the opener...Flo > Kashia all day every day

I have the same sense I had at the beginning of last season. Almeyda is giving a few guys a chance to state their case or hang themselves. I just hope he doesn't let it go as long before he makes some changes...this starting 11 doesn't play well together.

Minnesota is an excellent set piece team, one of the very best in the league... really one of their strengths. I felt this was going to be a brutal game for match ups. Everyone that plays for Minnesota has size and speed. Quakes looked tiny team wide...just hide your eyes match ups defending on set pieces.

Vega had a game to forget.

With this 11, we're either really bad at Almeyda's man marking system, or he's changed it up to switch it off and on with some zone defending. Whatever it is, it looks entirely disjointed.

Cowell was promising, much better than I expected against athletic MLS comp...he was getting things done...a positive impact for our attack. I'd like to see more.

Almeyda has some real work to do in the short term with regard to man management...he'll need to put some butts on the bench...players that were brought in to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

 

Almeyda, who said that there are no excuses for the loss against a superior #MNUFC , made this remark about today’s #Quakes74.

“We started off better than last season. We have one point. Little by little, it’s a slow process.”

I ask, where’s the urgency to compete?

— Joel Soria (@soriajoelfutbol) March 8, 2020

I guess we’re supposed to be happy about 7 goals allowed and 0.5 PPG from two home games??

 

The most entertaining thing for me at tonight's game was a big laugh provided to me by Earthshaker, considering my 68 years of age and the recent attendance advisory.

I sit in the second row above the Quakes bench. Apparently, when the downpour was at its height, I may have been the only one in my section (or at least one of the few) to stay put, focused on watching the debacle unfolding on the field. Even my wife had headed for higher ground.

Earthshaker happened to come by, took a look around at all of the empty seats stretched out around me, and asked, "What's the matter, you got the corona virus or something?".

So I can't say the night had no redeeming value whatsoever.

 

Some great posts here tonight.

So I recorded the game so I could watch it later this evening. The good news is that I was able to FF through the halftime ads and the useless analysis (I actually like Slaton, but let's face it... any analyst that's trying to be serious about this joke of a team is just killing time). The bad news is that when I started the recording, I saw no pregame... in fact I saw no kickoff. The dvr clock was at 0:00, but the game clock was in minute 22, and the score was already 1-1. WTF Comcast/NBCSBA?

So within about a minute, I can clearly see that Minnesota is just out-hustling us, out-techniquing us, out-everything us. They were faster, stronger, quicker, smarter, and more aggressive. They were winning 90% of the 50/50 balls, swarming us defensively all over the field, and playing quick passes that were putting our "defense" (ha ha ha, our "defense" ) out of position with regularity. When we would gain possession, we did what we so often do. We would just try to keep it, and s-l-o-w-l-y maneuver around a tight little area while the opposition gets back in a good team shape and then starts swarming us again. If we're lucky, we're able to keep it just long enough to feebly attempt to move the ball forward until somebody makes a bonehead pass into traffic. Even the guys who gave us a spark last year (Espinoza, Yueill, for example) were failing to find quick combinations and get Minny on their heels. At one point we got a free kick in the center of the field, and Yueill decides to take it quickly. That was a good decision, I think. Unfortunately, he passed it too close to the nearest defender, and suddenly we're scrambling to defend a quick counter. Even without the failures of our set piece defending and the sketchy performance of our keeper, this team just doesn't look ready to play? Same as last week.

Once again the line-up puzzles me, and others have already broken it down. Where the hell is Flo? Is he in the doghouse or something? He might have been our MVP last season, and he can't get a game now? Did he try to talk to Matias in spanish, and accidentally say something rude or disgusting? I just don't get it, and if nobody else here knows why he's not playing, I'd say this situation is just plain odd.

I still don't see Rios as a starter. I still don't think Lima is an MLS-level defender (he's got the athletic skill to be an outside back, he just doesn't DEFEND well). I said the same thing last year, even after he got called up to play with the NATS. He was also awful (dreadful) offensively last week, and I can't remember the last time he had a game that really impressed me. Danny Hoesen needs to play up top (as long as he will play hard consistently, which I'm not convinced he will, which may be why he got yanked tonight). Some guys just seem to be losing whatever confidence they seemed to have been building last season. Sigh... tweaking the line-up on this team is probably a hopeless exercise anyway. I was impressed with Cowell's confidence, agressiveness, and effort. Yippee, I said something positive.

 

I might have too high expectations but IMO the interplay between TT and Espinoza wasn't as good as it usually was. In the 2nd half Espinoza on the left wasn't as one-dimensional as he usually is, cutting in more. I think Vako on the left and keeping Espinoza on the right would be the best move but I'm interested in seeing more of Espinoza on the left if we're gonna keep playing Vako in the middle.

100% agree with the consensus on here
-Hoesen on the left sucks
-Vako in the middle not good
-Eriksson as a CM sucks
-Yueill as a #6 not good
-Rios bad
-Kashia sucks
-Judson needs to come back
-Flo needs to come back
-Lima bad
-Vega sucks
-Should have bought a backup#6/Godoy replacement
-TT was good
-Cowell looked promising
-as a whole, we played too slowly, lacking urgency

The only things I have slight disagreement are about the #9 position, I'm fine with starting Hoesen or Wondo or even giving Rios 1-2 more games, I think 2 games is a small sample size to judge Rios on, lack of involvement might be a problem with the tactics instead of him. I also think Shea played well enough to earn a shot at starting at LB.

 

Looking at the highlights again after a nights sleep, it is worse the morning after.

What an embarrassment and disgrace!

The players should be ashamed of themselves but Almeyda should also receive his share of the blame. I don’t know how anyone can avoid blaming the coach after a score like that.

So far , the only difference between this years start and the Quakes horrible start in 2019 was the wonderful free kick to salvage a point last week. Other than that, I see no changes or positives.