Well, it's not all bad, but generally a poor piece. "The season hinged on so much going right, but the moment anything went wrong, it all fell apart." What does that even mean? Other issues: - He makes it sound like the season was an unabashed failure, and while we didn't reach the goal of making the postseason, we essentially doubled wins and points. The key question now is can we build on that - are we building something or is it another local maximum followed by strong drop to the bottom. - He makes it sound like the Bruce hire was a quick fix and we needed to immediately make the playoffs or bust. Bruce made it clear that it's going to take some time, and while postseason was a goal, all he promised is that we'd improve, and we did. We don't know if he's here for just 1 or 2 years. He could coach here for another 5 years for all we know. - He makes it sound like hiring Bruce and making him sporting director was Leitch's decision. Not sure that is the case since he was essentially demoted, or certainly the job of deciding who's on the roster was no longer his. - The criticism about failing to integrate the academy is valid, and I've made the same criticism. But I don't think you can make that comment w/o also acknowledging Bruce's integration of the superdraft guys. Lots of movement on that front last season: Beau, Ricketts, Floriani, Roberts, Munie, Bouda, etc. - He made it sound like it would have taken a miracle for us to make the playoffs even if we won the last game. "For all the fanfare made about Decision Day, little actually mattered. So much needed to go right for the Quakes that it felt almost impossible for them to see the postseason". Really? "Almost impossible"? All we needed was 2 of: Dallas to lose in Vancouver (likely!), RSL to lose in St. Louis (let's say 50% chance), CO to lose or tie to LAFC (likely!). VC getting an early red and Dallas winning was definitely an unexpected result given VC's form and Dallas missing a few key players on discipline. Bruce was so sure that 2 of those 3 things would happen that he proclaimed on his KNBR interview that we *would* make the playoffs if we beat Austin. Well he turned out to be wrong, but he wasn't really going that far out on a limb there.
Yeah, not a great article. Most of us here could have written that. Bruce made some good moves: Bringing on Chicho, Josef, Beau, and Dejuan. Benching Rodrigues and Wilson. Giving Bouda more minutes and helping to develop Bouda. Giving Benji more minutes, but that was almost necessitated by injury to Dejuan. And some bad moves: Benching Beau. Bringing on Viera. He's just not a big enough upgrade. Noel Buck. What a waste of a roster spot. Changing the formation when what we had was working. (We can blame part of that on injury to Dejuan.) Playing Costa in front of Marie. Dumb. Questionable: And playing Niko when Niko wasn't doing well ... I mean, Niko has to play, I can see that, but at the expense of Beau is just stupid. Stupid! Bringing on Lima. At the time, it might have seemed like a good call. But to not play him, when he's a fit at a couple of positions of need ... not great. And don't overlook that we got screwed by the refs in a couple of games with no matching "we got lucky" in a couple of games. We got a "break" in one game where the ref didn't screw us. But the glaring issue with the team is that down the stretch, when we needed to be better, we sucked. I blame that on Bruce. Bruce changed our formation, and he benched Beau. Both stupid moves. And yes, the Big Question now is, can Bruce improve us more next season? I'm afraid that he can't. Especially if we lose Espinoza. The fact that we slowed down in the second half of the season does not bode well. I am Not Optimistic!! Go Quakesfans!!
Well this is a surprise. Josef was our leading goal scorer and had a very impressive goals / minute rate. I thought we'd exercise his option. Maybe he wanted out so that he could go back to free agency and possibly make more bank. https://bsky.app/profile/tombogert.bsky.social/post/3m4wanrjgek26
Josef played his heart out, but it would be nice to have a player who wasn't on the downward slope of his career.
At some point the hand of time is gonna start pulling back Josef by the shoulder but if you look at his career, he's on a kind of "local maximum". He had his amazing year in 2019, then the bad injury and fell way off. But his last 2 years have been the most productive 2 years since 2018-2019.
We all remember those first glorious games of the season. The first game, 4-0, with Ricketts, Rodrigues, Bouda, and Costa (that Costa!) scoring. Followed by another victory. We didn't think our streak would last, but still we hoped. And then the bubble burst. I think that the somewhat coherent overview linked above was trying to emphasize that our younguns were the sparkplugs on the team, and Bruce used them erratically. He sent Hernan far away and seemed to forget about Bouda and Beau for extended periods. Back in 2003 you could win the Cup with old guys on your team (Troy, Agoos, Lagos, Ekelund all 30+) but that's not where the league is going in 2025. Apart from all those aging stars in Miami, and Kei Kamara, of course.
It doesn't have to be all one or the other. You can work in your young guys while holding onto a few veterans who are productive, and then phase them out. Josef was a our top goals scorer and was among league leaders in strike rate. I think one more year would have been a good call, and certainly you don't have to give away your asset - a top goal scorer in the league, for free when we could have signed him (cashed in on our asset!), and then traded him. Unless I'm missing something, it seems very dumb.
I’m not shocked. Josef is getting older. He wasn’t always great this season. Judd replaced him as starter for a while. I’m not surprised. Hopefully we put his salary to good use. If we lose Espinoza too, that will suck. But we could clear a lot of salary cap space this off-season. Presumably we’re going to ditch Wilson and Rodrigues, and probably several other players. And there may be other guys who want out, like Josef. Also, if Josef can’t come to agreement with another team, he might come back. That’s probably a long shot. So for strikers, we have Chicho, Judd, Bouda, maybe Benji? maybe Cristian? If Josef leaves, we’ll need another forward, maybe two. If Cristian leaves, we may well change our formation. We could see a lot of upheaval this off-season. Even upheaval we don’t want. We live in interesting times. Go Quakesfans!!
No player is "always great" throughout the season, especially strikers, who get hot and cold. He's getting older but he just had his best season since 2019, and scored some critical goals for us down the stretch. Meanwhile, Chicho scored 2 goals non-PK goals for us since July! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If we wanted to move an aging forward to retool, that might have been the place to look, especially since he makes nearly $1M more than Josef, takes up a DP slot, and is about the same age.
At 33,I doubt he will have been worth much in the form of trades. Maybe the Quakes could have asked for one of Atlanta’s players but I don’t think Bruce wants any of them.
He scored 14 goals in 1800-something minutes. Lots of teams would be interested. He’d be on the last year of his contract. There’s no commitment to keeping him longer than that. There are lots of players on Atlanta that we could use.
Josef wasn’t on my list of guys to ditch, but I thought that we might part ways. I didn’t say it, but it was in the back of my mind. So now we’re going to need to get another striker, especially if we stick with a 3-4-3 or change to 4-3-3. Oh and next year it’s playoffs or bust. Bruce should think that he’s in the hot seat. A new owner may well want to bring in his own coaching staff and GM. Go Quakesfans!!
We wouldn’t have even had to trade him for a player. We could have traded him for cash as a newish MLS “cash transaction”. But we get nothing, 0, zilch, nada if we decline his option. :facepalm
Mark Anthony Kaye thanked teammates, EQ, coaches and fans on social media and implied he was moving on, so that is another roster spot that will be open.
Not a surprise. He didn’t see much playing time down the stretch and his contract was something like 900k.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SJEarthquakes/comments/1ovfbjl/cristian_espinoza_is_leaving_the_san_jose/ If Tom is right, oh crap.
This is sad, the one player we could always count on to give everything on the field, and always a stand up guy off the field, I doubt this is what he wanted and more about our idiot f/o.
The report is that we offered him a new (presumably lower?) contract. If that's the case, we're really gonna cheap out of keeping our best player and team leader? :facepalm Letting Espinoza go would be about the last move I would have made for this club. I thought something might have been up when someone asked about Espinoza after the last game, and he said he was a "good player". Seems like a small thing, but he has referred to him as a "great player" in the past. A little bit of window into Bruce maybe thinking he could jack his salary down.
So far our offseason consists of: - Dumping our leading goal scorer - Dumping our leading assist guy, club leader legend Going great so far!