Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Real Salt Lake (Saturday, 7/6) postgame thread [R]

A tired team plays hard all night and gets rewarded

Not pretty but sweet.

 

Back up into 6th.

 

I was gonna say, maybe teams are catching on how we play and figured playing bunker ball and getting a few lucky goals (ahem..Minnesota) is a way to win...The Hoesen decides to score a winner.

Playing like punks and bunkering has negative karma points. Just because one team gets away with doing it, doesn't mean you will too.

RSL came here to watch a match and get 1 point, it didn't work in their favor. They have a dangerous attack and decided to play with 11 defenders instead.
But one thing they forgot is..
.
.
.
Goonies never say die (Permission to bring that back).

 

Hurray, that win came out of nowhere, we certainly deserved it more. Defense and goalie did really well.

 

Yesssss! Quakes win! Didn’t sound pretty, but-the team won.
I’m glad Max Bretos doesn’t call our games.

 

Goonies, ala, never say die. Lars should be happy. Yes, Quakes win. I’m happy tonight.

 

The team played hard on fumes after theses two weeks. Lots of hearts. Flo was pumped after the final whistle

 

thats a good hard W, will take that all day.

 

Boy, that was hard to watch in some ways. Even early in the game, both teams looked pretty tired, but we looked more tired. I was particularly worried about Kashia, who was lunging and getting beaten off the dribble repeatedly. He seemed to stabilize a bit as the game went on, but I was still worried that he was going to get beaten in the box and give up a goal. When RSL threatened him inside our box in those last seconds of added time, I literally held my breath.

I also thought Vako was going to be a net liability during the first half, because he was not tracking back very well. As with Kashia, guys rotated and helped just enough to keep RSL from creating too much danger. It was a group effort.

I thought Yueill had one of his weakest games in weeks. He was turning the ball over repeatedly with poor passes. Again, the team covered for his errors when RSL tried to counter. Jackson was also the one who nearly had that own goal. Thank you Daniel Vega.

Judson made several bad passes too, but he always does. Good motor on that guy, at least.

Lopez was Lopez, which means good and bad. I'm pretty satisfied with him overall, though.

Flo was once again very (very) solid in the back. A very valuable asset this year.

I cringed a bit when Matias took TT off, because I thought he was one of the few Quakes players who seemed to have some spark and energy, and was doing a great job of taking the ball up the middle and putting RSL's defense on its heels. I had no problems with any of the subs he brought on (and two of them created the goal, obviously), but I just thought TT should have stayed on the pitch.

One very frustrating thing about this game was the fact that almost nobody was getting into RSL's box when Espinoza was sending balls in from the right wing. And when they did get into the box, they basically stood there and hoped that the cross would find them. We did this over and over and over again. Come on, Matias! When Dangerfield is criticizing the team for something like this, surely the coach can see what's going on, and try to correct the problem. Of course, Espinoza deserves part of the blame also, for too many balls that were too high or too long (or blocked). But I'm sure he was tired too, so there's that.

Wondo, Eriksson and Vako are usually too slow in the attack, so when they're all fighting fatigue, it's not a pretty picture. Thank god Matias coaches to win, and used all his subs. Kudos, coach.

When we finally got numbers into the box, and a decent ball was played in, VOILA! Hoesen goal. I mean, it's not that complicated, right?

 

I loved the quick corner while RSL was still looking at each other. That is the sort of smarts that puts a team over the top, like Origi pushed Liverpool to the finals.

I love this team. I love that Almeyda subs to win. His confidence in the players is evident and it seems to push them to outperform.

For the negative: Wondo was not included in the game. They never tried him. If you never play to him, might as well give Danny a longer shift.

Vako has an amazing ability to come up with the ball in a 1v1 when the possession isn't settled. Espinoza is so confident and never seems at a loss what to do with the ball. Hopefully Jackson can learn some of that. When Jackson hatches a plan, he is good at executing, but so often he can't think of anything.

Lopez is very good on the dribble for a back, but his passing is a mess. Still, he has plenty of talent and he is only 19. If you can get away with starting a 19 year old back and not get killed, then it pays dividends as he develops.

Flo and Guram made some key decisions today. A couple times each they decided to leave their man on defense to lunge and intercept a pass. It worked each time and I don't think it was luck. They both have good instincts.

I think the Quakes could use either one more Espinoza-like talent up front, even a young one who needs to develop, or a speedier option at center back. Not because our CBs are bad, but I think we don't have that flexibility in our roster, and we are an injury-to Flo-away from emergency. I don't think Kashia/Cummings is a good pair, they don't cover each other's weaknesses.

 

Winning when you don't have your A-game is the mark of a true contender.

 

Watching the replay right now as I was at a party. I caught the last 10 minutes. It was a beautiful sequence and great goal by Danny Hoesen. Glad they won!

 

I noticed that Almeyda was a lot less animated than usual. We speculated that the team knows what to do they just lacked the energy to really pull it off. And knowing that, Almeyda seemed to just let them play.

I will give my only real criticism of the guy as of late, which is he was riding those starters into the ground. I'm glad he used all his subs, but Vako, Eriksson, Espinoza, even Yueill and Thompson looked like they couldn't keep pace.

Ridiculous and I'd argue dangerously congested schedules will do that to a team.

Also, the foul at the end line deserved a red card for its intent. What a horrible foul to commit for no other reason than to be a jerk. Petke really doesn't belong coaching in MLS if his choice is to use talented players as hitmen.

 

It wasn't a big surprise to see RSL bunker since that was the MN game plan that beat us. I do think the team should put some extra practice in at beating a bunker. I'm sure we will see it again.
I'm really impressed with Marie in the last couple games. Seems like in the past he played more defensively but now he's being more offensive and he's dangerous. I wonder if he could play a whole game that way.
Did anyone see the corner kick and describe what happened - who's idea was it to take it quick? When I noticed what happen Marie already had the ball. I got home to watch the replay and it looks like the cameras missed it to.
The subs were all great.

 

btw - I hate how RSL plays. A bunch of cheating thugs.

 

Espinoza played it to Marie. As I recall, Wondo and a few others were arguing something to the ref at the time. Almost seems odd that the ref would have allowed play to restart. But I'll take it!

 

Q in perfect position once again.

We’re gonna put this on loop all night.

For every RT of this goal, @SNHU is donating $1 to @the_USO!#VamosSJ | #SNHUGoals pic.twitter.com/1nKl9H9z5N

— San Jose Earthquakes (@SJEarthquakes) July 7, 2019

 

Glad we won, but what a weird, horrible game. We out possess them 60/40 and they end up with more shots and shots on goal. We didn't deserve it so I suppose we cashed in some karma credits.

1) Lopez was bad again. As was Judson. As was Vako. They really need to not start.

2) Was Wondo in the game? Hard to tell after rewatching the game on TV and seeing it live. The only way I knew was his constant bitching to the ref.

3) Defense is still giving too much room in the last 25 yards. It almost cost us several times.

4) Why did TT come out? He was was the best Quake, out side of goal, and had most of the dangerous runs. Lopez should have been subbed first (or better yet Judson).

Player of the game has to be Vega.

 

There's this guy called Beckerman . . .

 

I don't know about red, but he (Baird, the former Stanford forward) seems to be a real jerk. He had another dirty (if slightly less egregious) foul at the end line earlier in the game. Reminded me of the play that led to Messi and Medel getting ejected today in the Copa America.