The Official 2026 San Jose Earthquakes related Blogs/Press thread

Columbus as in....Columbus Circle? Columbus OH?

 

I was gonna say. They need 80+ meeting rooms and 126,000 square feet? For what? But also, we need to move Vancouver.

 

Escape from New York.

The fact league stuffed shirts have doubled down is evidence they are flying blind.

 

I don't see the purpose of this huge, extravagant office.

MLS today, unlike the earlier years, must have money to burn....

 

I'll probably watch this one on delay - Forward Madison plays at the same time and if there's a way to watch those ESPN games on delay I've not found it.

 

2026 player salaries just came out. Nothing too surprising except that Timo's base salary is around $4.25M. That's way higher than anything we've ever paid before (which is maybe around $2.5M?). The only other semi-surprising thing is that it looks like a lot of guys got big raises. The good news is that they are generally earning it this year: Benji - $478k, Munie - $574k, Niko - $755k, Bouda - $350k, etc.

https://mlsplayers.org/resources/salary-guide

 

Chicho at $800k I guess means we’re paying part of his salary which probably means we can’t reclaim his DP slot? I think he was at over $2M last year.

 

MLS lists Chicho as no longer occupying a DP slot. There is a loan fee being paid from Nacional to the Quakes (MLS) so I imagine it's set up in such a way as to cancel out his MLS salary figure.

 

I think we had this conversation before, or similar. I think the fact that Hernán shows up as a DP on that chart and Chicho doesn't is due to the salary that's on the books. $800k is just under the max before it needs to be a DP salary. And Hernán's $1M salary is over the threshold. Whether or not their DP slot is opened up, based on my understanding, depends on whether or not the loanee club picks up the full salary, and I'm not sure that that chart really represents that state. I don't know what Hernán's salary appearing as $1M means (that was about his salary before he was loaned out) and what Chicho's salary of $800k means relative to the loan.

One possibility is that Atlético picked up Chicho's salary minus $800k, and that $800k conveniently allows us to open up that DP slot? But I don't know how that squares with the idea that the loanee club needs to pay the full DP salary to open that DP slot, and I don't know what that means for Hernán's salary on the books.

We signed Chicho to a new contract at the beginning of the calendar year. This could be wink-wink way to work around the requirement that the loanee club picks up the full salary. Let's say Atletico agrees to pay $1.2M and the Quakes tell Chicho, yeah, we'll do the loan and we're gonna sign you to a new contract worth $800k. Then the whole situation makes a little more sense - the Quakes signing Chicho to a new contract and then almost immediately loaning him out.

I have heard a lot of pundits claim that the Quakes have 2 open DP slots but I've never heard anyone on the Quakes say that as far as I know.

This is from MLS roster rules on DP loans:

If an international club absorbs a Designated Player’s entire salary during a loan period, the MLS side will open that Designated Player slot during the loan period, regardless of the player’s initial acquisition costs.

Previously only Young Designated Players and U22 Initiative Player slots were eligible to open due to a player being loaned out.

This will apply after a player's first season on an MLS roster (i.e. in year two or later) and the player must occupy a Designated Player slot at the time of the loan or, if the loan occurs in the offseason, the player must have concluded the prior league season as a Designated Player.

 

Remember that the Quakes and Chicho signed a new contract about a month before the loan was announced. It might have been structured in such a way to facilitate this type of loan arrangement, since he was already being linked to other clubs (in Mexico IIRC) before the Nacional thing happened. They might have even redone the contract again to coincide with the loan transaction to put his MLS cap figure right at the TAM/DP threshold?

 

Yes, that's what I suspect, and wrote in my post above, repeated here:

 

So we likely have Chicho's DP slot. Hernán's maybe. $1M is not that much of a salary by MLS standards but it could be a lot for an Argentinian club like Argentinos.

If we can believe this chart, he's earning 3x more than any other player on Argentinos. I think that may be someone extrapolating from known data points (e.g. Hernán's salary at SJE) w/o knowing the real salary.

https://salarysport.com/en-us/football/super-liga/argentinos-jrs./

 

On the recent soccerwise podcast they had an "all great value" 11 - value per newly revealed salary. Beau, Roberts, and Judd were on it.

 

With the exception of a few injury plagued seasons, Mike Hewitt was a 7-year starter at GK which is more than any other Earthquakes player can claim from the NASL era.

Congratulations to Mr. San Jose!

You deserve it!

 

Garage man cave.

 

This is ludicrous. MLS Western Conference teams have had to make "pitches" to the league to get Miami on their schedule? I guess we got a game last year because of Apple. Otherwise we may have only gotten it if it was at Levi's, and even then we would have had to compete with other "pitches". Notice that the league was also concerned with blowback in case Messi doesn't play, so the teams had to have some kind of backup plan (like another reason for the game being a big deal, etc.). The Quakes sidestepped that by making the game about being against Miami w/o ever saying "Messi".

https://bsky.app/profile/jdnalton.bsky.social/post/3mm5jfbuwl222

 

I know some of you *love* xG, but this is interesting. We are "overperforming" our xG by about 10 goals, which is a lot, and probably 2nd highest "overperforming" in the league, but Nashville is overperforming theirs by almost 20 goals!

https://bsky.app/profile/tutul.bsky.social/post/3mmpmpx3g3c2l

It could mean nothing, or it could mean that we are due for regression to the mean, or it could mean (mostly) that Daniel's been really good for us this year.

 

The Quakes are closing in on the Guinness world record for the most meaningless Guinness world records. The Kaval Syndrome.