Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Real Salt Lake (Saturday, 7/30) post-game thread [R]

Jebo doesn't get enough credit for his holdup play, which is really good. He rarely looses the ball and often makes good positive passes. His finishing runs hot and cold - his goal was class but then he hit that right-footed awful shank. On balance it's good enough, and combined with his hold-up play - he's a good player.

 

I was wondering if CL was getting into Covelo's ear a bit about making sure he doesn't neglect the 1st year players.

I feel like Benji's cooled off - he hasn't looked as dangerous last few games. I know he's really putting in the work defensively, but he hasn't had the same spark on offense. Maybe he's just not used to playing so many minutes. May need to give Cade a start to spell him.

We're getting pretty close to the "play the kids" phase of the season. We've dropped enough points in the last few games that playoffs are getting to the extremely unlikely phase. I think 5 games or so ago we were in the 20-30% but now we're at 7%, and after Miami on Wed we have a tough stretch. CL may have to have some more talks with Covelo to get him to ease up, and that he's going to be evaluated not just by wins and losses but also by player development. And I can't see one or two defensive reinforcement really making that much of a difference at this point, especially by the time they get acclimated to the team and everything.

 

Bouda

 

True, but where was Lopez?

 

This was a pretty disappointing game. Covelo apparently didn't learn anything from the previous match and made the exact same substitutions in the exact same way and let a Real Salt Lake team that had struggled to hold the ball for more than a minute at a time totally dictate the last 10 minutes. There ain't no way he gets the full time gig and, if it were me, he wouldn't be in the organization at any level after this season is over. Totally inexcusable.

Monteiro, again, had a really bad game, including his ridiculous decision not to shoot from close range. He's been really off his game lately and the Quakes are really pathetic going forward without him playing at his best.

I've noticed the team has become incredibly timid around the goal again after the early Covelo days where they were high flying and free-wheeling. The Quakes curse of boring soccer has come back again and claimed another crop of players.

Remedi is not an MLS quality player. The guy can't make a successful forward pass with any kind of regularity. His first instinct is always to go backwards and destroy all forward momentum. And when he does make forward passes, they almost never actually connect with their target. I really hope his contract is up at the end of the year.

Yueill is not the kind of player who deserves to be captain. Where is his influence on the team? Where is his leadership? Granted, I don't really see anyone with captain qualities on the current team, but at least give the armband to someone who acts like they want to win.

Massive credit to Espinoza, Lopez, and Ebobisse. While they didn't all play perfectly the whole game, they at least were trying to win the game and didn't get caught up as much in arguing with the official (who, admittedly, was one of the worst I've seen in a long time). I'm so sick of the players constantly expecting to get calls and giving up on plays and not paying attention to what they're actually supposed to be doing.

That falls to Covelo, who clearly has no influence on these players anymore. It seems really obvious to me that everyone knows he's not going to be coaching next year and they've just given up even pretending to care what he has to say. I'll also say that Covelo almost getting kicked out of the game was ridiculous. Yes, the official was a pompous ass who cared a lot more about players giving him respect than calling a correct game, but charging at the officiating staff like Covelo did and hounding them is worthy of ridicule. I can't wait until he's gone.

 

Yeah, from the summary, the three yellows went to Espinoza, Yueill, and Gregus.
RSL's goal scorer, Savarino, got one in the 96th minute for excessive celebration, maybe it looked like it was waved toward Lopez??

 

Savarino pulled off his jersey - that’s what that yellow was all about.

 

Reminds me, the no shirts off anti-celebration rule is asinine.

 

Notes I took:

- very weak defending from Nathan on the first goal. You got to either get the ball or the man there, not neither. Just soft.

- Didnt know Luna's Dad played for the Quakes, which makes it even dumber we chose Fuentes over him.

- Marie sucks defending 1v1 and TT abd Espinosa are in the wrong positions. Would love to see Espinosa at RB and TT in central midfield.

- once again the wannabe pep forcing the team to play out the back when they just need to put a boot through it and it leads directly to the second goal. Covelo is not the guy.

 

- Also, Lopez getting a "F it im leaving MLS anyway red card" at the end?

 

Did you look at the rest of my twitter post? The Diego Luna fan club gathered on the field post-game for a photo. They were chanting “Diego Diego”

It was a LARGE group

 

I believe it.

 

Quoted from Med_Phys on the RSL thread:

"SJ has a notoriously cheap owner."

Even other team's fans know the truth about FishCo.

 

Totally agree. It was a very poor decision by him to pull himself up and out of position...very high risk. Especially since he has not one but two RSL attackers directly in front of him up field who are primed to exploit the space he just vacated if he doesn't make the play...I agree it's either ball or Man...but he should have never put himself in that position.

 

Now I would also say that I am glad that was able to sell my Quakes tickets of yesterday's game, drive 5 hrs down to Pasadena, watch a team that actually uses the possession effectively, enjoyed the atmosphere of 94,000 in attendance, take 1 hr to leave the parking lot, and then drive 5 hrs back to reach home at 3:30am.

I just watched the recording of the Quakes game. Frustrating. It feels worse than a loss. Thanks to NBC Sports, I didn't see the first 30min and the first two goals. So glad that we won't have to deal with this next year with Apple TV.

 

But they are chumps, so to do so would be dishonest.

 

Nathan's on his butt goal line clearance. So, is that what they mean by missing a sitter?

 

The first goal yes came from some good attacking pressure but it's conjecture to say it would've been a goal without glad's handball. The pk was a gift, it wasn't at all clear it would've been a for sure goal.
The 2nd goal, I could've made the pass that espinoza made. It was put on a platter for him by a stupid RSL mistake.
The xG being about even supports my observation... we should be doing better than "even" at home against a club like RSL.

 

luna didn't seem like anything special in this game and he hasn't gotten many minutes for RSL.

TT - it's such a shame how this club ruined TT and continues to play him out of position at fullback. So unfair to TT who has been a loyal servant and done whatever's asked of him even though it's not his strong suit. if this season is lost then we need to start giving him minutes in central midfield or outside mid again and give him a shot to earn minutes in those spots.

 

Several good points in this thread. Not sure where to start. I usually start with a positive observation, but other than Epsinoza, there is not much to be positive. Well, may be the ref who everyone is complaining about gave us a PK (Note: I agree with the comments of him being overally "official", but had no problem with the yellow cards that he handed out the Quakes.).

The bad. Where to start:

• Monteiro passing up a shot, and even worse, head down early in the game instead of passing to Yuell in the center of the field with plenty of space (Note: Danger even called it out, but didn't say his name).
• Lopez and Shea trying to play the ball out of the back in stopage time rather than booting it and letting the team get settled in defense.
• Gregus being so friggin slow in play and decisions. He had so many opportunities to put press on RSL.
• Remedi being Remedi.
• Bouda making a traffic cone look good. Prime example of why not to play young players because he is not ready.
• Cade not pressuring the cross (or his primary foot) that led to the goal.
• JT for trying to catch the shot (which is rare) rather than parrying the ball over the crossbar.
• Nathan decision to pressure on the first goal.
• Our defense plan to lineup on the goal box on crosses rather than actually marking a friggen player (two RSL players were wide open on the far post).

Just not good enough. Players, coaches, and administration. Bad team appear to be competitive, but find ways to lose. This is a bad team.

Playing young players, moving TT into the middle, etc. is not going to solve the problem. Covelo is a lame duck coach and his players are playing like it. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

 

I think every goal has some element of "defensive mistake / liability" + good attacking play. Whenever we're scored on, we always talk about who screwed up on defense - more or less every goal(!) and we never seem to credit the attacking play of our opponent. But more or less every goal is some combination of good attacking play and defensive mistakes.

xG is going to be independent of "deserved" vs. "gifted" goals so it wouldn't support any observation related to that. It's going to be about the resulting danger of the chance. But I agree that even xG (1.6 to 1.7 in this case) is not good enough for a home against a team that is probably that much better than us despite the difference in points.

That said I feel like we play pretty good soccer. We are possession-oriented but create enough danger to score goals (born out by our season total GF). I'd rather watch a possession-oriented team than a kickball team as long as that possession-based team is creating enough danger to score goals, and I think we meet that standard.

If we get burned sometimes playing out of the back, so be it, I'd rather watch a team that tries to play out of the back vs. a kickball team. You are going to pay a penalty sometimes in failing to play out, but OTOH a team that plays out of the back limits possession for the other team in general, which should limit chances. So that's the trade-off. We just need to get better at defense. That's partly a "transitions" problem and partly an individual 1v1 defender problem.

So in summary, I think our style of play is good - it's a winning style of play if you are good enough at it. We're just not good enough at it yet. But I think we're on the right track.

 

Luna played in the Quakes II game against Real Monarchs, maybe the whole game(?). He looked pretty good. He's crafty, and has kind of a unique look as a soccer player - kind of stocky build with low shorts. Very easy to pick out. I think he will be a Meram kind of player - tricky around the box. He's not fast probably in a sprint speed sense but has decent quickness in short spaces and strong on the ball.

 

??

That was Marie. He got tripled deked by Meram. Meram went to his left towards the end line, then right, Marie bit, and then back to his left again towards the end line. Marie was deked so bad, Meram actually had room to hit the cross with his right foot, which was the side that Marie was on at that point.

 

Even though being a fullback isn't his best position, I can't think of one goal where he's been primarily or significantly at fault this year. He's always susceptible to speedy wingers, but I don't think that has resulted in any GA this year.

That said, to your point, is any manager going to come in and have the sense to say "Hey this is bullshit, why again are we playing TT as a fullback, he was always a mid before?" Unfortunately the team has about 300 mids on the roster now, so it's going to take someone who can think out of the box that's been built over the last 4 years or so, and someone who might see his value over the other 300 mids. For Covelo, I think his hands are tied with the roster positional mix. He needs FBs desperately even if he were to say, nah, TT should be a mid.

Matias actually played TT as a sort of attacking mid late in some games early this season where we needed goals, and he did very well in that role. Would love to see more of that.