Opening night win is a saveless shutout
Failure to make the playoffs the past two seasons has left Earthquakes’ fans frustrated. But cause for optimism emerged Saturday at Avaya Stadium in the 2017 MLS season opener.
Anibal Godoy scored the only goal the Quakes would need to beat a Montreal team, 1-0, that features one of the league’s top attackers in Ignacio Piatti and had never lost to San Jose in five previous meetings.
Godoy polished off a nice give-and-go with Chris Wondolowski to reward a spirited effort by the Quakes, who scored a league-low 32 goals last season. With several new players in the lineup, San Jose controlled most of the play.
“The difference between this year’s team and last year’s team is attitude,” said Godoy, who scored his fourth goal in 34 MLS games to highlight a powerful performance in central midfield. “All the new players have come in and contributed to the success. But the main thing is the attitude of the team is different. It feels better.”
The Quakes ended up with a staggering 17-5 edge in shots and blunted Montreal’s attackers so effectively San Jose goalkeeper David Bingham didn’t need to save a single attempt. Rookie right back Nick Lima, a Cal product signed by the team In December as its second Homegrown Player, responded to the challenge of quelling Piatti — the Impact’s top scorer in 2016 with 17 goals — by hounding him into poor passes and clumsy touches.
“At the end of the day, he’s a soccer player and I’m going against him,” said Lima, who attended Castro Valley High and joined Tommy Thompson, who also started the game, on the Quakes’ Homegrown list. “You can’t put a spotlight on his back and say, ‘This is the star, you have to defend differently.’ I just went out there and defending him like he was another player. That works best for me regardless of who it is.”
The Impact greatly aided the Quakes by losing the ball in its own half of the field and stepping into mistimed tackles. Two such fouls by Impact defender Hassoun Camara produced two yellow cards, the second of which resulted in a red card and ejection midway through the second half. The Quakes increased their pressure playing 11-against-10 but were unable to notch a second goal.
“It would have been nice to score a couple more goals there, I thought we had a few good chances to extend our lead,” said head coach Dominic Kinnear, whose teams in the previous two seasons won just 21 of 68 games and last year finished ninth of 10 teams in the Western Conference. “But to start off the season with a win is very positive.”
Godoy set up and scored the only goal in the 17th minute. He stripped the ball from Impact captain Patrice Bernier in midfield and raced forward while playing a short pass to Wondolowski, whose return ball rolled perfectly for Godoy to coolly lift it over the desperate lunge of Montreal goalkeeper Evan Bush.
Wondolowski marveled at the quality of a shot, a delicate chip that floated under the crossbar as a sellout crowd of 18,000 roared its approval. “I did not seem him chipping it,” said Wondolowski, who is fourth among the league’s all-time scorers with 121 goals yet missed a wide-open shot in the final minutes. “That surprised me as well and what a finish.”