Seattle Sounders FC - San Jose Earthquakes (Wednesday, 5/13) pre/in/postgame thread [R]

We played a pretty poor game with trying to get some guys some rest, but it really comes down to two things. The missed push before the hand ball, and a poor decision by Floriani prior to the goal (I thought he was there most of the night, just a glaring error ends up in our net)

 

Not the best effort by the boys. The lack of marking on that last goal was U10 like. Defense has been stellar all year so hoping tonight was a one off. Just a tough one to swallow. Boys need to right the ship Sat vs Dallas.

 

I agree the ref did not look terribly even-handed tonight.

 

The CR gave away our throwin to Shittle. Our coaches complained. It took thirty seconds off the clock which we did not get back. Terrible officiating! And not the first time he got a throwin call wrong this game.

 

I notice they're letting more stuff go this year on the basis of "accidental", which, for a while, was not a criterion. Honestly I don't know what the criteria are now. There was a handball no-call a while back that went against us. I think it hit the guy's hand or arm as he was going down. And the discussion in the booth was like "well, no way was that intentional", so nope! No handball!

 

Looked like a Shittle throw to me. The ref lost me though in the first with that terrible penalty

 

It is an offence if a player:

• deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball
  
  
• touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger. A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised
  

• scores in the opponents’ goal:
  
  • directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental, including by the goalkeeper
    
    
  • immediately after the ball has touched their hand/arm, even if accidental
    

the second bullet I bolded is the operative clause. You will notice there is no mention of “intentional” - hasn’t been for years and years. This is why announcers should STFU about the laws, because they’re all morons and none of them know what they’re talking about.

 

Some extremely bitter pills to swallow tonight. Having taken the lead so early, I was confident that we could get a draw. Inexplicable that a double-handed arms-extended push gets handwaved away, but that's home field advantage for you. Ferreira beating Daniel at his near post after dribbling Roberts was not good on anyone. I don't like that Ferreira dribbled from midfield into the 18, but I'm more upset that Daniel couldn't even muster a courtesy dive to try to stop the shot at his near post when he was sighted the entire time.... And that last goal, goodness, must've been tired minds and legs out there, because nobody marked anyone. We'll give up as many goals as last season if we keep doing that.

We have to shore up our defense. We're almost never going to win any games if we're giving up 3 goals a game. We need another CB, another FB, another midfielder to replace Tsakiris, and then probably take 1-2 more depth pieces, just to be safe. I think it's crucial to be making all 5 subs every game (which we did do today, which was good), and we need a full two-deep that doesn't fall off a cliff compared to the starters.

 

I disagree. First, it looked our throwin to me (your mileage may vary). Second, our player thought it was our throw. Third, there’s no chance that Bruce and Sarachan would have argued so vociferously if they thought it wasn’t our throw.

Now maybe it wasn’t, but I’d bet a beer that it was.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

Seattle has our number......

 

And we can’t even blame it on the turf

 

Well said.

Our defense wasn’t as coordinated as usual. We lost a lot by not playing Munie. Romney had a good game. Something I don’t say often. JJ had a number of poor moments, including getting a yellow card. Floriani had some good moments and some awful ones. But we missed Munie’s leadership out there.

And our midfield mostly sucked. A few good moments here and there, but a lot of failure too. Marie and Skahan were the best of the starters. We didn’t look competent until Beau and Harkes subbed in.

And did I mention that the ref was shit! That really hurts the game. It clearly really frustrated our guys, which hurts the mental side of your effort.

We didn’t play well enough to win, but we did play well enough to tie.

AND… we NEED reinforcements. A decent back up for Judd. A decent backup/starter for Niko. Another CB. If we have only one or two subs on the pitch to start, we’re OK. But when it’s more than half the squad we lose cohesion, focus, and leadership.

Go Quakesfans!! Be well!

 

i know what the rule is, I'm just telling you what I notice in terms of how it's getting called this year. It is a little more lenient in terms of "unnaturally bigger / justifiable by the player's body movement". That is often a judgment call, and the way they make that judgment can vary from year to year.

 

Bruce said that the refs were poor. Otherwise, a very Bruce press conference. Also, Nick Fernandez.

 

That was Floriani who got owned by Ferreira. I was thinking he was having a good game and then there was that play and he got beat again by someone (Morris?) on what should have been another goal for Seattle.

That was always gonna be a tough one as we went in there with our B Team. And even though we had a 1-0 lead for a while, Seattle was creating chance after chance. It's just a matter of time. You can't reliably win games that way. That's really 3 and 1/2 relatively poor games in a row. We are limping into the break. One positive is that I think we evened out the game after Seattle's 2nd goal and at 2-2 I think either team could have won.

It's always hard to get a good read on the subs when they're all in there together, by Jazzy's Law - below. Basically the more subs you have in the game, the worse the performance of any particular sub will appear to be relative to their actual quality because they're playing with a bunch of other subs.

Backup Performance = BP
Backup Quality = BQ
B = backups in the lineup
S = starters in the lineup
k = some constant

BP = k*BQ*(S/B)

But I think the players that helped themselves were: Fernandez (who now has 2g, 2a in 3 starts) and Jasinski. Buck didn't really impact the game, Jona was OK - also didn't see as much of the ball as I would have liked, Floriani started well but got skinned a few times - once for a goal, Adimabua had that one good defensive play at the start but was not very good after that.

 

Yes yes yes. We need 8 Starters on the field every single game. That means we probably need more than 11 players who we'd consider "Starters" every game. We can use the 5 subs a game to rest tired legs, adjust to games, and put more into the attack/defense as necessary.

 

Interesting little tidbit from the postgame with Nick Fernandez. Apparently he has Peruvian citizenship by virtue of one or both of his parents, and the Peruvian national team has been in some kind of contact with him.

Also, 1st question to Bruce was "What did the team learn from a loss like this". Bruce didn't like the question, and there was awkward silence. Then he just said he didn't know how to answer that or didn't want to. OK, next question!

 

Yes. Bruce was pissed about the consistently bad calls, and that one occurred right in front of him. He was so pissed he criticized the ref crew after the game. He’ll get fined for that, but I’m glad he did it. We’ve seen some good officiating this year, and some really biased stuff.

Still, we did not play well.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

No we did not play well, we need 2-to-3 more players to give us the depth we need with this condensed schedule.

The good news is that this is the last World Cup that will be scheduled mid-season as we move to the European schedule in '26

 

I barely noticed Buck or Jona - neither impacted the game at all and our midfield was a sieve the entire game, with Seattle moving at will through lines.

 

Let's face it, our "B" team is total garbage and could be beaten by any USL side. This loss is entirely on bruce for not using his starting 11 against the ONLY team to beat us this year.

 

I agree it was stupid and arrogant to give nine of 11 spots to the scrubs. Rather than vary the lineups giving a segment of the starters some time off over the last four/five games before the break I believe he arrogantly thought he could spell the entire A team at once and the scrubs would be fine, since they’ve been coached by the maestro. Didn’t work out that way.

Oh well - if nothing else this should show him and Fisher that reinforcements are badly needed. With Jones and Nick out for the season, even with Timo likely to return in July that’s not going to be enough. We’ve relied on luck and the bounced going our way, but that is never sustainable over the long run as these things tend to even out. Add in our long history of uneven officiating and it could be a long slog this summer and fall without QUALITY reinforcements.