Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Los Angeles FC (Saturday, 9/25) postgame thread [R]

LA SUCKS!! LA SUCKS!!

That was a better win than against FC Broccoli. This was much more of a team effort. Lot’s of guys played well. Most excellent!

 

Quakes win. G’night, y’all from Arlington, TX. Vamos Quakes.

 

We played some damn good football tonight. A relatively straight forward win. Now, just need some consistency!!

 

And very nice to get the shutout after giving up a ton of goals in the previous games.

Benji was good, and on more than just his goal.
Chofis was good. Espinoza was, even though he didn’t figure in the scoring.

I really can’t think of anyone who didn’t play well. That was outstanding!!

And F@#$ LA!!!

Go Quakesfans!!

- Mark

 

Arghh we thought the quakes were unable to possess the ball until LAFC subbed in their baby brigade. We looked damn slow and slow to react.

that said, it was nice to come home with win pin #4 and not feeling all grumpy for a change

 

Benji run and goal were great... other than that I was not impressed.

I usually don't comment on refs (hard job and all) but I really thought this game was one sided... like the league said that LAFC couldn't not make the playoffs or something. LA's strategy was to foul as soon as the ball enter their half and there should have been many yellows for them for persistent infringement.

 

“We are from the Bay and we (bleep) LA! We are San Jose!”

— San Jose Ultras

 

So that was by my estimation the 2nd full game we’ve gone JuRY midfield, and the 2nd win, both against LA teams. It was a bit tougher in the 1st half - LA was pressing so hard and seemed faster, but we got it going in the 2nd and we eventually had them “arm-barred”, where they had a hard time playing thru our midfield and we were launching lots of counters into space.

There was one play where I had to laugh because Judson would run to the player with the ball to double team, and then if they didn’t win possession there he’d run to the next guy and double him. He’s just so valuable as a d-mid.

 

Does anyone notice a larger contingent of Latino fans at the games recently or is it my imagination? I wound up sitting next to a couple of young Spanish- English bilingual guys with Chofis jerseys. They weren’t recent fans though. They’ve been STH since 2016 or so and knew the team well.

 

1H had 14 fouls by LAFC vs 7 by Quakes. 2H was pretty even, I think about 5 each.

1441960137703395330 is not a valid tweet id

 

Benji can hold the ball at the top of the box like nobody we’ve seen since the goodies days, and he and Chofis were really on the same page tonight.

 

I thought he was hit and miss on that, and mostly miss. His touch is inconsistent. The defender would run up his back, the ball would often boink up in the air and someone would swoop in on the other side and grab it. Jebo is much better at it. But Benji’s just starting out in that role. He’ll get better at it.

 

Watching from behind the goal and the thing that stood out about Benji is his excellent ability to time his jumps which, along with his athletic ability, allowed him to win almost every duel. More importantly, he would head the ball towards an open player instead of just blindly heading it towards the goal.

 

Not the prettiest win but a very efficient and effective performance.

Yueill was better. Remedi should probably release the ball sooner. Judson had another great game.

Chofis had another goal and assist. His moves in tight spaces made the crowd happy and were also effective in keeping the ball in transition.

Glad to see Shea back. Not sure when Jebo feels he is ready.

Benji did another good job this game. His goal was well taken and his work rate was high too. Did pretty well in aerial battles. He is growing each game.

On the other hand, Abecasis and Espinoza were the ones who kept losing the ball. TT held the ball well during the limited minutes.

LAFC tried to killl us with speed when they were chasing the game. Our team defense was able to handle it for the most part. Their defense with three big and tall CBs was pretty bad. It is also a team of divas.

I think the referees have to pay attention to the trend that, in the disguise of high press, teams get away with consistent fouls in midfield during transition to stall the attack.

 

Quakes Epicenter
Welcome to The Aftershock! This is the 28th episode of Quakes Epicenter's new Youtube show, hosted by Jamon Moore and Alex Morgan. We break down the San Jose Earthquakes' 2021 Major League Soccer second home game against LAFC. We will talk to Matias Almeyda, Jackson Yueill & Benji Kikanovic after the game.
67 minute YouTube video:

 

Still a pretty good hill to climb to make the playoffs but it feels like the team has taken itself out of contention for the Wooden Spoon. They have some separation from the bottom three.

This win was huge because LAFC could have gotten way out in front of the Quakes if they had won. They still have a couple of tiebreakers on the Quakes but they are feeling the pressure for sure.

 

Chofis has kicked into high gear and is carrying this team on his back. 11 goals and 3 assists this year. Vako's best season in 2018 he managed 10 goals and 4 assists. Chofis has as many goals as DPs Pulido and Pizarro combined.

 

Didn’t watch the game but saw the goals.

I guess this guy Chofis isn’t all that bad after all.

Anyway, you have to love it when the Quakes beat a team from LA!

Hopefully , they can keep it up and put some more wins together.

 

This was the first time that I can recall charting Marrufo. he called a lot of fouls, but I thought he missed 10 other calls. I noticed that he tended to call the fouls that were right in front of him. But he seldom called fouls from 10-15 yards. Ideally, 10-15 yards is where the referee is supposed to position himself. It was very striking, because I’ve never noticed this before in an MLS game.

Coulda been a recreational ref!

 

We weren’t trying to possess the ball. We were trying to hit them on the counter, and it worked. We took advantage of their tendency to throw lots of guys forward, and their defenders really aren’t very good. There was a lot of ball watching on our second goal.

It wasn’t until we were up 2 to nil that we started to look to possess the ball more.

One of the things that I think we need to do is adjust our tactics for each opponent. We aren’t good enough to dominate other teams (unless they suck) so we need to figure out how to take advantage of other teams style of play. Or just figure out how to avoid getting slaughtered.

Go Quakesfans!!

- Mark

 

Spot on!!

 

No, I think we wanted to possess the ball more in the 1st half but couldn't. I mean even if you want to counter you have to generally string a few passes together to do it. And on restarts the long balls out to Nathan failed every time I think. And the longish passes to Benji, back to goal, often failed as well.

The formation, on paper, looked like a 4-3-3, with JuRY midfield and Benji-Chofis-Espinoza at the front. But it actually played more like a weird unbalanced 3-4-3 like this:

----------------------Benji----------Chofis---Espinoza
Lopez------Remedi---------Yueill--------Abecasis
-------------------------Judson-------------------------
--------Alanis----------------------------Nathan------

I say "weird and unbalanced" because Judson was like a sweeper in front of the 2 CB's, and Benji tended to play more centrally and Chofis either center or on the right. So we had lots happening on the right side andi in the center attack-wise and a big hole on the left, especially when Lopez was not pushing forward. There was just nobody there.

This is the passing network - you can see what I mean (hopefully). But I was also going by what I saw with the eyeball test.



This is one of the those games where, finally, the Quakes got the bounces. It was something like 1.3 to 1.1 LA to Quakes in xG. We finally got that 2nd goal to build on our early goal lead before giving up the tying goal, so that we could start to apply the "arm bar".