Quakes embrace role as underdog
Almeyda set to coach his third season
The San Jose Earthquakes open the 2021 Major League Soccer season today with the kind of optimism new beginnings often bring even when the prevailing wisdom suggests otherwise.
San Jose starts at Houston in a matchup featuring the league’s worst teams based on sportsbooks’ preseason predictions. The Quakes and the Dynamo have been given little chance of winning the MLS Cup title this year.
The oddsmakers’ evaluations have not deterred J.T. Marcinkowski, who will open the season as the Quakes’ starting goalkeeper after playing last month for the U.S. under-23 team that failed to qualify for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
“If we’re one thing, we love being underdogs,” Marcinkowski said Wednesday in a video call with reporters. “We love when people count us out. We kind of take pride in that and want to prove people wrong but we also want to prove ourselves right.”
Coach Matias Almeyda starts his third season with a new look in some key positions but the same focus on building team unity above all else.
“That doesn’t guarantee that we will triumph,” he said in Spanish through
a translator. “It does guarantee they will respect and love each other as a group.”
Almeyda, 47, has tried to prepare the Quakes for the eight-month season while dealing with the loss of his father, who died last month in Argentina. Reports from Latin America said Oscar Almeyda died of COVID-19.
Matias Almeyda said he had not seen his father in more than a year because of travel restrictions during the global pandemic.
“Losing my father was the hardest and most painful thing I’ve experienced in my life,” he said, speaking publicly about the death for the first time.
“My father with my mother gave me values, many of which I feel the world is missing today,” Almeyda added. “They taught me to be humble. They taught me to love what I do. They taught me to respect others. They taught me how to be a human.”
Those values are an extension of what Almedya has tried to instill in the Earthquakes.
Almeyda’s team enters the season with personnel changes he hopes will be enough to prove the oddsmakers wrong. The biggest move was signing Mexican Javier “Chofis” Lopez to replace Magnus Ericksson as the Quakes’ attacking midfielder.
“We’re a team that doesn’t sign players for lots of money,” Almeyda said. “Our signings have been loans with players that I know and that I have coached.”
Lopez, on a one-year loan, played for Almeyda at Chivas de Guadalajara in the Mexican league.
The Quakes have two high-priced designated player positions available. But the team did not make a major move, perhaps waiting until the summer transfer window opens to sign the players they have targeted. General manager Jesse Fioranelli rarely discusses his personnel strategy until after a player is acquired.
In the past three years, Almeyda and Fioranelli have recruited seven Latin American players to help cultivate the coach’s philosophy on how to play soccer.
Almeyda said he hopes his beliefs influence everyone from the youth to senior players. He brought the Quakes’ under-23 academy team to a preseason camp in Santa Barbara this year to help spread his gospel.
Marcinkowski, of Alamo, sounded like a true believer when saying, “In our locker room, we know that we can play with anybody, we can beat anybody. There’s a confidence about our squad and I don’t think it’s a mistake.”
Confidence in the Quakes often has dipped with their play the past two seasons under Almeyda.
In 2019, they dropped their first four games before rebounding in midseason and then falling apart at the end.
Last year, San Jose failed to win at home in its first two games before MLS officials temporarily suspended play as the coronavirus outbreak grew. Although they qualified for the playoffs as the Western Conference’s final team, San Jose also gave up a dismal 51 goals that did not inspire faith in their play.
Almeyda wants to see a stronger start this year. After playing at Houston, San Jose is home for five of its next six games.
Another poor start could derail efforts to reach the playoffs two years running.
When asked where he hopes to see improvement this year, Almeyda said it boils down to playing with consistency.
“We went through bad moments, we went through average moments and we went through good moments,” he said of the 2020 season.
The team’s rollercoaster ride through MLS personified what most people in the world experienced during the worst pandemic in a century. Marcinkowski, who took over in the goal for the final 11 games, framed his feelings about the upcoming season with the health crisis in mind.
“Thinking back to last year, we all didn’t know where the world would be in 365 days and now, obviously, we’re in a much different place; our team, myself, everybody,” he said.