And two years prior (in Wondo’s breakout season), the Earthquakes got even further… to one game away from the MLS Cup final, in fact. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Reminder that the Quakes hired Chris Leitch instead of Will Kuntz 1863238730351321512 is not a valid tweet id
He did a great job, but not all those green boxes are acquisitions. Fagundez shows up 3 times for example, Reus twice. Also as I've mentioned, he was sitting in the catbird seat, with something like $15M in salary dead weight coming off the books, and Riqui Puig to build around. But yeah, he made good choices, both with the big signings and the smaller ones.
Chris Leitch needs to be fired ASAP. The Quakes 2024 season was finished after 1-2 months, yet the asking price for both Yueill and Ebobisse was steep enough in the summer when the Sounders inquired about them that neither one was traded away... now the Quakes will get no compensation for either one. Truly room temperature IQ stuff from the Quakes front office. Jeremiah Oshan from Sounder At Heart: Jackson Yueill is out of contact and Jeremy Ebobisse had his option declined. Sounders inquired about acquiring both this summer and asking price was quite steep. They’ll now likely walk for free. 1863734612708479101 is not a valid tweet id
Yeah but we were holding out for our "playoff push"!!! I think CL was looking out for his own tail at that point in the season. He could start tearing down the team midseason to start stockpiling for next year, but there was a decent chance he wouldn't be the GM next year.
Some were, some weren't: After 4 games the 2024 San Jose Earthquakes season is already over (spoiler alert: the 2024 Quakes ended up being one of the 2-4 worst teams in MLS HISTORY)
I was making a tongue-in-cheek remark about CL thinking we were going to make a playoff push in July. As for the whole "starting out 0-4 things means your season is over!!", the fact that we turned out to be historically bad doesn't prove anything. It's mostly correlation, which BTW ≠ causation. It would be like if I flipped a coin 4 times and it came up tails each time. That doesn't prove that it's a weighted coin. It might be. Or it might be that you rolled tails 4 times in a row with a proper coin, which is not that uncommon. And if you guessed that it was a weighted coin and you turned out to be right, that doesn't "prove" that 4 straight tails means that the coin *must* be weighted! A 23% chance of making the playoffs doesn't mean that "your season is [definitively] already over", nor does it mean that you are destined to win the Wooden Spoon. In 2019, the Quakes started 0-5-1, worse than this year, with losses of 4-1 and 5-0 in the 2 previous games before finally winning. By midseason they went on a roll and were one of the best teams in the league before flaming out at the end. Yes, in the end they didn't make the playoffs - they were one spot out, but the 0-5-1 start did not seal their fate such that they were bound to be awful all year long.
Both Inter Miami and NYCFC started 0-4-0 and made the postseason in 2020. And what's magical about the first 4 games anyway? It's not unusual for teams to lose 4 in a row during the season. It's not good, but not a deathknell either. Teams usually go through hot and cold spells throughout the season. We never got our hot spell last year, but we might have, as we did in 2019.
CL is not making those calls anymore. It’s up to Bruce to identify players like that, and so far he hasn’t shown much interest in looking outside the league.
For 3 minutes when he said they wont adopt the history, but a lineage of them previously. Oxymoron? Yes
It’s more Bruce Arena at this point. It’s possible Bruce has given him a wish list and he hasn’t been able to execute on it yet, but listening to Bruce talk, the only wish list item I’m hearing is a #9.
Leitch to do list 1. A bunch of moves with the Revs -DONE 2. Starting #9 -DONE 3. Trade or dump Gruezo 4. Starting LW
I think all those things will get done except the last one. So we're going to have to decide among: 1) Benji 2) Marie 3) Pellegrino 4) Ricketts 5) ?? Also depends on what formation we play. Pellegrino doesn't really even work as a wide forward, but he really wouldn't work as a winger in a 3-5-2 or traditional wide mid in a 4-4-2. Benji would work in either of those cases, as would Marie or Ricketts. None of the options are great,; I'd like to see Ricketts get a shot at it.
We have three U-22 initiative slots... I think we are the ONLY team to not have used any, and I would expect that to change give we now have someone who is competent in charge finally. We are clearly going to be a "3-3 team" given we're currently at 4 DPs with Gruezo Clubs with three DPs can use up to three U-22 roster spots. Teams with two DPs can exchange the third DP slot for a fourth U-22 Initiative slot plus up to an additional $2 million in General Allocation Money.
We should be using our U22 slots (at least one!), but I haven't seen any inclination from Bruce that he has any interest in using them. In fact he seems to be somewhat averse to bringing in players who have no experience in the league, though I know he did it a few times with NE. I'm gonna predict that we use 0 of them.