Official 2025-2026 Offseason thread

Well that's just not how it works. If he wanted to prioritize a Stanford degree, he would have stayed a college soccer player for more than one quarter.

 

He can prioritize a pro career and still take some classes at Stanford, and, getting back to my original point, this could be an incentive for him to stay local.

 

It's a smart move. As we saw with Lima, even relatively successful soccer careers are short. As a Cal grad it's a little hard to say, but a Stanford degree is a valuable and impressive thing. Taking some quakes money now, also a solid move.

 

The most obvious reason for him to stay local is that he's a Quakes Academy player, so the Quakes are the team that could give him a homegrown deal.

 

Apparently there was also interest in Japan and Europe, so there were "deals" to be had elsewhere as well. He's not required to sign an MLS Homegrown deal for his 1st pro contract. And also, Cruz Medina's dad advised against anyone signing a homegrown deal with the Quakes .

 

Of course he wasn't required to, but he did.

Everybody's entitled to their opinion.

 

And if he did, and if "everyone is entitled to their opinion", then someone can speculate about why he chose the Quakes.

I find it a little odd that Tomo would completely forgo college at Stanford to (let's face it) play at The Town instead. He's not even a standout college player yet. I don't see Bruce considering him for 1st team minutes any time / year soon. And of course it's entirely possible if not likely that he just had a change of heart. Meh - college is not for me - I just wanna focus 100% on my soccer career.

 

That just isn't something that college athletes do: go pro as a freshman but still stay on the academic track. Unless there's any reporting that Tomo is doing something highly unusual, there's not much point in saying anything more.

 

There are a lot of variations to "stay on the academic track". To me it's a little bit of an unusual college to HG deal because Tomo is not even an established college player yet, unlike TT, who, as I mentioned, was one of the best players in his conference his freshman year. And also, both parties had the opportunity to make this happen before Tomo went to college.

 

pretty simple....maybe committed to college for maturity purposes and played sr year split between academy and 2nd team. If he signed then he's not playing in the winter vs. this path he played during winter when 2nd team season was over. Stanford had 2 strikers who sr, 1 fifth year sr, and other sr who were both drafted in sophmore years. Stanford also was ranked #1 longer than any school during the year, and 4-5 players from the team signed to MLS clubs. Tomo took over and started over one of the sr's during the ACC and NCAA tournament and if you look at stats had the most shots during those matches. Tomo was also hurt in beginning of season with torn quad which is why his debut which he scored the game winner was vs. Santa Clara. He missed 1st 2 games and working his way back to health. College soccer schedule is so condense so recovering and fitness in a condense schedule means missed games and/or limited time. Zach Bohane who was the star missed games similar fashion 2 years in a row. How many Town/2nd players w/ Quakes played significant min who aren't under contract? Might be a club policy to priortize signed players. Tomo might have played the most at quakes 2nd team of any player not under contract since Quakes 2/Town started. Going to college allows both physcially and mental maturity especially considering in the past some of the rumors have been Quakes HG lacked maturity. Something to consider...half the CB's in college are of the age of 23 and 25 yr old many coming for 2nd division in EUROPE, so might have been part of the plan to have him play against older and more physical players and considering his highlights he seemed to hold his own. College soccer is know for it high intensity and physicality and thus having him play 3-4 months in that environment could have been a plan for him to accelerate development process. Especially when you consider the last 2-3 almost 1/3 of entire MLS draft comes out of the ACC. As far as college, its true he's staying in class, but he's training w/ quakes and will play with quakes. Unique situation where he can still goto school and play soccer and path to 1st faster this path especially if quakes and Tomo believed the path to contributing to first team was sooner vs. later. If later, he stays in college another 2 or 3 years. if he can contribute in 1 or 2 years he comes out early. You can see on Tomo twitter feed him training at J-league club and EU clubs so that validates interests, but if family values education somewhat unique to take classes while playing soccer. I believe Budha left early and yet finished and got his degree at Stanford while playing with Quakes.

 

Thanks for that.

@ThreeApples

OK, so there was something to my speculation after all.

I've seen some conflicting info - one that Tomo signed a homegrown contract, and another that it's one year of Next/Pro and then homegrown. Is he gonna train and play with The Town next year, or just train with the Quakes and play selective Next/Pro games like some of the 1st team guys do?

 

he'll play with the town and train w/ 1st team every now and then and possibly start to get integrated more towards end of the season w/ 1st team. Tomo is still growing in less than 6 months went from 6'3" his listed height at Stanford to almost 6'5" you can see him standing next to Julian Donnery on his twitter feed. He's also over 195 lbs and still growing, yet he doesn't most like someone 6'4"/6'5" as you can see by his highlight videos. As far as contract, its 2nd team first year and 1st team/HG afterwards. Similar to Chance, Edwynn, and I believe Beuax although I think Beaux was initially 2 yr 2nd team and 1 yr first team w/ club option. Quakes will probably announce details towards end of the week.

 

Huh - a few days ago the Quakes media “machine” wouldn’t shut up about Timo, but lately, nada. Any clues as to what’s going on?

 

I don't think there were any official Quakes media posts about Timo. There was one social media post that seemed to be mimicking a Quakes social media "player announcement" post but was not a real Quakes post I don't think. In the meantime, lots of "set to join" or "nearing deal" kinds of reports from various sources (ESPN, MSN, Fox Sports, Reuters, Mercury News, etc.), but most of those are almost a week old.

And then of course we have mentions of the poor desperate Quakes ticket sales people trying to use Timo to sell tickets.

 

"Morning movement"? I think that may be a premonition about how our season is gonna go.

 

Yeah, it's kino of suspicious that there is the sound of nothing.

 

Be quiet and just appreciate Ian Harkes, will ya!?

 

Wow we’ve had some crap offseasons but this one takes the cake!

 

Ay, ay, sir, three bags full sir!