The article says we offered him a new contract. Maybe he's already decided he's not gonna take it, and he's gonna test free agency. Great job, Bruce. Let's think of all the moves we can make in the offseason, and start with the last ones you'd ever want to consider making, like letting your leading scorer and leading assist guy and club legend go. :facepalm The article also says he might be *the* most sought after target in free agency. Nice, Bruce. And once again, we don't get anything for him when we could have taken his option and potentially traded him or transferred him if we wanted to move on. So dumb. A great player on an option is an *asset*. Don't give away your assets for free. Then it's no longer an asset. Same for both Espinoza and Josef. We just lit a couple million $ on fire. :facepalm
I wonder if Bruce thought it was just gonna be a routine restructuring of Espinoza's contract to cut a bit from his number as he's now on the plus side of 30. And Espinoza surprised them and told them to f off. He may have already been pissed about how Bruce treated his buddy Hérnan.
Here's another thought about Bruce dumping Josef and Espinoza. Is it possible Fish is gonna just clean us out this season as kind of a purgatory season while a sale (might) happen? Not sure Bruce would stand for it, but it's possible that Fish is gonna cut like $5M from the budget. We were 17th in salary budget last year at about $14.5M. The lowest spenders were around $11M. According to "capology". If that's the assignment then if Bruce is smart we go into a rebuilding year (for real this time) and sign a bunch of young players. Then after new ownership hopefully happens, keep the good ones and then go in and make some impact signings again. It would be about taking some lumps for a year after cleaning house, and then hopefully coming out strong. It never seems to turn out to be that cut and dried though. We'll probably limp along with some combination of FoB MLS veterans and be no better or worse next year.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s still a bit too early to tell for sure. After all, what did many Warriors fans think of Joe Lacob the night he traded away long-time fan favorite Monta Ellis for Andrew Bogut in 2012? GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
This may well be true, but I think that also something else was going on. We were good the first half of the season, and then we went into the tank, and it wasn't just about losing Hernán. He sat the bench (was injured) for a while, and we still did well. Then, we went to crap. And we were bad down the stretch. The whole second half of our season we were awful. Espinoza might just want out. He might want to play on a winning team for a while. OR, he might be going back to Argentina. OR, there might be something deeply wrong with our team. It's not like one or two guys got cold, the whole team got cold. Whatever Bruce is or was thinking, he's not on the same page as a fair number of the players. Are we going to lose Beau? I bet we do. I bet we lose several more quality players. There's something wrong in Quakesland. Go Quakesfans!!
I fear this also. RottenFish might just gut the roster. He doesn't give a shit about the team. But we'll be worse next season. I see almost no chance that we improve. Bruce had us playing poorly the second half of last season. (A little more than that actually.) And we're losing Josef and Espinoza. Two of our most important guys. Who would you sign to replace them? And we're going to lose more players, probably at least a few good players. We're going to suck hard next season. Go Quakesfans!!
I have had it with this dysfunctional "organization", this may very well be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Clearly the inmates are running the asylum and as long as they are nothing will ever change. I hope Espinoza leaves this sinking ship and goes to San Diego, LAFC or Miami and gets the championship he deserves, he's just wasted here in San Jose. I've been a fan of the Quakes since 1976, almost 50 years, and I've put up with their stupidity, from Azizi, Innocent, the Donovan fiasco, the cavalcade of failed and incompetent coaches and now the letting go of Espinoza for ZERO compensation is just the turd frosting on the cake. Martinez, Espinoza and maybe LeRoux gone? FISHER-GONE! SHAWLEE-GONE! LEITCH-GONE! ARENA-GONE!
Maybe we're changing strategy -- if we can't be the best, we can be the most entertaining a la Harlem Globetrotters. We'll have goofy players and bring back the performing dogs for the halftime show. Fans will be laughing instead of sobbing when they leave!
Note that LeRoux leaving is just speculation on my part. I haven’t “heard” anything about that. I’m just guessing. My view is that Beau got benched in favor of players who aren’t as good. If I were Beau, I’d want out. Beau was our best and most consistent center mid all season. If I were Beau, I’d be pissed. PISSED! Our team sucks monkey balls. The level of dysfunction is off the charts. Bruce has been good elsewhere, but he comes to San José and then he sucks. There’s something wrong with The Quakes that tarnishes every one who gets involved with the team. Can you tell that I’m down on our team? Go Quakesfans!!
No way Beau leaves unless someone wants to pick him up in a transfer for good $. But right now he’s a bargain, and they shouldn’t mess with it. But given recent track record who knows. Let’s make the dumbest moves possible?
1989501625027985715 is not a valid tweet id Sporting Director and Head Coach Bruce Arena will continue to work with Head Scout Ian Russell, Head Sporting Strategist Vassili Cremanzidis and Technical Director John Wolyniec on the sporting side of the club.
Incredibly unsuccessful but hard to see him as anything other than the latest scapegoat/fall guy in a long line of failed GM’s and coaches going all the way back to 2008.
And!! It's offical. Chris Leitch leaves as the all-time winningest Quakes coach in the post-relocation ear. And it's not very close. Coach-----Win%-----Postseason Make % Yallop--------35----------------40 Watson------33-----------------0 Kinnear------32-----------------0 Stahre------14.3----------------0 Leitch-----41.2---------100 Almeyda----32-----------------33 Covelo-------30-----------------0 Luchi---------25-----------------50 Russell------12------------------0 Arena--------35------------------0
I was never sold on Leitch as GM but he had his work cut out. It would be interesting to get his unvarnished take on why the Quakes have been so poor since he joined the team all those years ago (2009) as a defender. I doubt we'll hear much from him though; he's never been very good about communicating with our fans.
I never understood the theory that Chris Leitch is somehow to blame for all the failure since he’s been with the team. He was a pretty good player and then got involved with the academy and helped build it up to be a pretty strong academy despite not having the resources / facilities from ownership, and then becoming the winningest coach in our post-relocation era in a short stint. And if we say hey it was a small sample size, what other Quakes interim coach was ever even nearly as successful as Leitch, when he came in and changed our style of play and lineup and we still won enough to make the postseason. The only job he didn’t do well in was GM, and that was only a couple of years. With Bruce as Sporting Director, CL basically became Bruce’s coffee boy so I don’t count this year. Bruce was making roster decisions and coaching the team. This season was 100% on him.
I blame Fisher, as you know. Worst owner in sports. Let's hope we can find a buyer who wants to keep the team in SJ and someone who really cares about competing in this league.
I think the "CL is the root of all of our problems" theory is coming from a few people on reddit. It's fair to blame him for 2024 and 2022 to some extent, but not really all the other years.
I think we were both baffled by the decision to loan out Hernán López Muñoz. I was never that impressed with him, but he needed more playing time with his teammates, and it was ridiculous to let him go, at a critical point in the season, and then do nothing to replace him. I have to think that was a Fisher-driven cost-cutting measure which really marked the beginning of the Quakes slide out of playoff contention. And now, here we are, no closer to a training facility, just lost our best player...Arena failed to impress, Martinez and Chicho are aging stars, and Pellegrino is scoring goals with expansion SD who are closing in on a cup final berth.