Seattle Sounders FC - San Jose Earthquakes U.S. Open Cup (Wed., 5/11) pre/in/postgame thread [R]

Sac-Town is waiting to bitch slap y'all

 

Is that the Delta in the background?

 

I don’t think they suck, but it does seem possible they struggled playing in two competitions at the same time against opponents who were not.

 

At the outset of this thread you stated the Sounders were going for the treble, including winning the open cup. You obviously thought they would defeat the Quakes.

 

I knew I was wrong as soon as I saw their starting lineup.

 

Nope it's The American River, which directly behind the stadium.

 

Delta Queen baby!! The Rock is probably getting ready to take a trip on that bad boy.

 

Perhaps he'll be great in Greece, especially if it's a situation where he's coaching one of two top teams in the league. But my guess that if he is successful, it will be because they team he coaches spends 10x what the other teams do.

But most likely he won't. He'll do fine in short bursts but we have enough data, over 3 leagues, to show that he just isn't good over a season.

 

AEK is one of the top 3 or 4 teams, so the good news is that he's coming into a good team. The bad news is that they expect a high level of success, and if they don't get it, they're very quick to pull the trigger. It's kind of the inverse of the Quakes. Right now they're 14-8-4 (w-l-t) - they win over 50% of their games. So he's probably going to have to meet or exceed that to hang.

Maybe he figures that even if he gets a quick trigger, he's very likely to have a winning record, and he can point to that and hope people forget about the Quakes.

 

I recall many years ago attending a Quakes Open Cup game at the University of San Francisco against the Galaxy that ultimately went to penalties. I believe it might have been Jon Conway in goal for SJ and he saved a Galaxy kick that would have won it for SJ but ref Michael Kennedy decided that the keeper had come off his line too soon and allowed the Galaxy another chance which was converted. They ultimately won the game and the fans were PISSED at Kennedy (looked like Galaxy keeper had moved early several times). I recall the bleachers were right on the field with no fences so fans came on the field after the game to walk to the parking lot and a bunch started giving Kennedy an earful. He ended up getting a police escort to his car and when he walked by me he looked like he was terrified of getting beat up. Crazy scene for sure.

 

If the Quakes win the tournament, they qualify for the CONCACAF CL.

I'm not sure it produces much in terms of revenue like the UEFA CL but I think playing against Mexican teams would draw a lot of fans at PayPal as opposed to playing in front of 3,773 fans at Starfire Sports Complex.

That could help the Quakes coffers.

 

Was probably counting on Fortress Starfire to win the day. The two teams were pretty evenly matched if you go by minutes played in MLS this season. Our starters averaged 239 minutes for the season, Seattle, 247. Great victory at a tough venue.

 

I was at the game as well, and I was pissed off afterwards. Don't recall joining the crowd yelling at Kennedy after the game was over, but I remember the game vividly.

 

I was walking across the field to get to my car and Kennedy and his bodyguards walked right past me. It was surreal. Cobi Jones was booed all game. It was a hard fought contest for sure. Seemed like Kennedy jobbed the Quakes pretty badly. Scary for him the fans were literally on top of him in the stadium. Like playing in a prison yard.

Foggy and quite cold. The Seattle game definitely brought back memories of that game. Except this time the good guys won!

 

Time to run if the delta has breakers on the shore like that.

 

Best Name Ever

 

I think you are quite right about this. He needs guys who can run for 90, win their duels one-on-one, and probably some one touch passing would help. But I’ve not seen his system in full flower.

I know that the FoM that we brought in were too slow and didn’t win enough tackles.

Years ago, late 90’s, I thought I wanted to see man-marking, because we allowed the enemy to run around our end unmarked, while our defenders just defended space. Now I realize that I don’t want that. Mark the guy in your zone, sometimes we need multiple guys in a zone.

But on offense, I want a more fluid system where guys move to the open space and exploit it. Business in the back, improve in the front. Kind of a reverse mullet.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

Sorry not buying it. You mentioned FOM. These are players that played for Matias previously when he had more success, so it follows that they must be “Matias kinds of guys”. They were able play successfully in his system. And while they may not be his top choices why would he want them at all if they are not suited to his style? Further, what characteristics did any of those guys have that made them well suited to Matiasball??? In some cases (Rios, Alanis) they seemed actually worse suited to man defense than the rest of the Quakes.

Are we now down to - he needs a certain kind of player in order to be successful but he is not yet aware of that?? Who’s gonna tell him? After all it wouldn’t be his fault if he’s unaware. It would be *our* collective fault for not telling him!

 

Ah, JJ, you misunderstand the situation. Those guys did well for Matías in other leagues where foot speed is not as important. Also, they were mostly not starters on his other teams. Rios and Fierro were both subs elsewhere. One of the criticisms that I have made over and over about Matías and Jesse both is that they never understood the foot speed in MLS. They brought in guys who they thought were fast, but they were only medium fast.

And lots of people told Jesse and Matías both that the team needed more foot speed.

In part, their problem was that they never really respected MLS and never really understood just how fast and physical the league is.

But in any case, Matías is gone, and we don’t need to worry about him anymore.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

Nope, not "misunderstanding" anything. If it was about foot speed, and miscalculating the difference between Liga MX and MLS, why did Almeyda, after seeing Fierro, a player known as being reasonably fast in Liga MX, be not that fast in MLS, double down by bringing in the relatively slow Alanis and Chofis in later years? And if foot speed is critical to Almeyda's style of play, why were those players successful on his Chivas teams when even by Liga MX standards they would be considered relatively slow?

My point is that this idea that gets floated around - "Matias needs a special kind of player for his system to work!" - I'm not buying it. Unless of course we're going to say by "special" we mean "great player". Then we're down once again to "Matias is a great coach if he has great players". But again, to me, that's kind of table stakes. If you have a team of great players, you should be a great team.

 

I'll opine here with the understanding that reasonable minds can differ, but here's the most apt comparison I can think of to MA's style of play:

80's and 90's college basketball with the Hoyas and the Razorbacks. You need high defensive acumen, fast foot speed, and good instincts on spacing and where to apply pressure. And to be good or exceptional, you need at least 1 or 2 players with a high degree of ball skill, but everyone on the field/court needs a high IQ. Because if you don't have that, you end up pushing the risk/reward ratio in the wrong direction.

Trying to run that type of high-press system without the right players has agonizing results, as we saw with Richardson's teams in the late 90's / early 2000's, when he wasn't able to find the high on-the-ball skill players to complement everyone else. In his case, he needed a highly skilled PG/SG who could regulate the tempo and direct spacing.

I see MA's system as very similar. You can compensate for a lack of ball skill if you have high energy defensive-minded players who can force turnovers and have good defensive spacing instincts. Complement that with a couple of highly skilled, high workrate midfielders who can cover lots of ground, and you have the basis for a pretty good team.

The thing is, building such a team wouldn't even be that expensive because the characteristics you're looking for can be present in players that don't command top dollar, with the exception of the midfield archetype I mentioned above - that's where you spend the money. it's kind of the perfect system for a moneyball situation. Players like Cade and Monteiro fit the ideal pretty well. I have no idea why MA and the rest of the front office didn't seem to get this. It should have worked in SJ, and yet... I think it's down to 2 things: MA not really understanding the limitations or possibilities of his own style and the front office not really understanding how to provide the support to make the system work. For example, they never found the right kind of midfielders to make it work. JY is serviceable. Judson was decent. But neither of them is the class of midfielder we need. Tyler Adams would be a great field general in this type of system. Hell, Bradley in his prime would have been great in this role.

It was an own goal - it should have worked. But the one absolutely critical ingredient that was missing was workrate - for this system to be successful, you need a team of field players who last longer than the opposition, wearing them out because of superior conditioning, stamina, and the ability to force mistakes all game long. We never ever had that.