Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - D.C. United (Saturday, 5/1) postgame thread [R]

Well Vako’s not on the team anymore so not much choice. But yeah Matías kind of went back and forth with Vako - he’s in, he’s out, he’s in, he’s out, etc. and for a time anyway Vako played great under Almeyda. He just didn’t quite get it going last year and didn’t get back into favor after returning from intl duty.

 

I think you're perhaps the only person here who misses Vako...

 

Well there’s that other guy - bobbyguzman? I think Vako’s a much more talented player than Fierro. He has to be “harnessed” in the right way but we have a coach who should be able to do that. We could probably do a little better with a DP at that price point. But that assumes we’ll use it someday. Right now Vako’s nonexistent replacement isn’t helping us.

Vako is one guy who can score against a packed D. When we need a goal later in a game and the D is packed in, gee, what happened to all that space for Cowell and Espi to run into? We’d better have a plan B.

 

OK pals, we walloped DCU. They were badly under powered with many starters and second string guys out. So let’s not get too carried away with glee.

Our defense is still weak. Beason looked good against DCU, which I hope built some confidence for him. But we need several upgrades on defense.

Abecasis, Lopez, Marie, TT, they are all only middling good. None of them are as good as the 2012 versions of Beita or Morrow, not even close to that.

None of our CB’s are as good as Muma, Goodson, Dyak, or even Jason Hernandez. We’re in trouble there. Maybe Beason can be as good as we need, but so far the jury is still out on him.

Judson and Jackson are good enough to be sure. Remedi is much better than Luis Felipe, but still occasionally plays a grossly under weighted square ball that is easily picked off by the opposing team. And we don’t really have any other backup d-mid.

Chofis is not up to stuff. Now maybe he’s still getting his groove back. He says that he’s not completely game sharp yet, which I find refreshingly honest. I expect him to be motivated to play well too, because this may well be his last chance to revive his career. So maybe he gets better, but Dario Brose he is not.

Fierro plays hard and tries to combine with his teammates, but he’s not very good. He’s nothing like as good as Espinoza, and we need for him to be at least two thirds as good as Cristian. Espinosa rocks. But who are our backups? Cade? Haji? TT? Shea?

Cade is on a hot streak, which is excellent, but without service, he’s not going to be able to do much. And he’s young, so he’ll be a bit more up and down than most veteran strikers. And who backs him up? Rios is shit. Wondo is getting old. Is Benji worth spit? Or is he just this guy whose name I throw out there every once in a while for comic effect?

Who’s our back up keeper? And is JT really a starting caliber MLS ’keeper? Who backs up Chofis? Will Jacob ever see the pitch again?

We have a ton of glaring weaknesses on our team, and our bench is deep with meh. I remain completely pessimistic about this season.

Go Quakesfans!!

- Mark

 

I hope you're right but how can anyone know for sure? It's not like the Quakes put a tail on him and follow him around all day. Now he has that shiny new Audi SUV, he's a young man, living in the Bay Area...we'll see, hopefully he can stay focused, deliver more goals, early and often. He's also not up to snuff, but showing signs of progress.

this is the whole thing. our schedule get's a lot tougher from here. we were fortunate to get two relatively easy games at home to start the season (since we bailed on preseason games), but the competition really picks up from here, it's still too early to tell if the Quakes are really much better than the past few seasons.

 

Agree. In the warmups before the DCU game, I thought that DCU looked tighter, quicker, more athletic. But during the game, it felt like DCU had very little teamwork, each guy was just doing his little part for himself but not for his teammates. Julian Gressel was their best player but he wasn’t doing anything to make his teammates better. His body language was more like, I’m open pass me the ball.

Quakes on the other hand had a better sense of what they were trying to do as a team, and knew players’ patterns. The contrast showed me the difference in real teamwork. Of course, DCU has a new coach so the players have a lot of adjustments to make.

 

FWIW, Matias had some very nice things to say about "The Beas(t)" - Tanner Beason, at this end of this segment. He said "everyone's talking about Cade but Tanner did really well, etc.". Thinks he's going to have a good career, and carries himself very well (paraphrased). Matias is usually a bit halting of his praise of young players, so that caught my attention a bit.

https://www.sjearthquakes.com/post/...ys-match-against-real-salt-lake?autoplay=true