Quaking with anger, Union need three on road
As has been documented before, MLS doesn’t often make a ton of intuitive sense.
Saturday, the Union will be holding on for dear life to playoff aspirations against San Jose, a team occupying the final Western Conference playoff spot in a battle likely down to seven teams for six spots.
The Union, long shots to make the playoffs in the East, have scored six more goals than the Quakes. They’ve allowed seven fewer. That equates to a plus-1 goal differential against an unsightly minus-12 for San Jose.
And yet the Quakes (9-10-5, 32 points), who are just three points ahead in the standings, have far
brighter postseason prospects as the teams collide Saturday (10:30 p.m., TCN).
New coach Chris Leitch has San Jose hurtling toward the playoffs thanks to its capitalization on home turf: A 7-1-4 mark at Avaya Stadium for a return of 25 of a possible 36 points (69.4 percent). For perspective, the Union’s 7-4-2 record at Talen Energy Stadium yields just 59 percent (23 of 39).
Leitch took over for veteran skipper Dom Kinnear in late June; since, the Quakes are 4-4-0 in MLS, the split cleaving cleanly between home and away.
“They’ve had a little bit of an injection of life,” Union manager Jim Curtin said. “They’ve had some really good results. They’ve had some tough results on the road as well. … They’re going to be an angry, desperate team. We’re an angry, desperate team. So you have two teams that need all three points at this stage. Draws don’t really do either of us good right now, so we’ll both have to probably be aggressive.”
Sitting sixth, the Quakes have work left to do. They trail Vancouver on points per game, the Whitecaps on 31 points with two games in hand. A matchup against the floundering Union (8-115, 29 points) would seem a golden opportunity to gain ground.
Leitch, who spent the last three years of his playing career in San Jose before joining the academy staff in 2012 and being named technical director in 2015, has tinkered with the lineup effectively. He’s deployed a 3-5-2 recently, though the suspension of center back Andres Imperiale for yellow-card accumulation may preclude that. Leitch has given freer rein to young players like Homegrown Tommy Thompson and first-round SuperDraft pick Jackson Yueill, and they’ve rewarded him, Thompson belatedly scoring his first MLS goal in his 64th game in a career spanning four seasons.
Leitch is also working in a new designated player in Georgian midfielder Valeri “Vako” Kazaishvili, while Chris Wondolowski (nine goals, five assists) is still adept at leading the front line at age 34.
All that roster change makes the Quakes difficult to scout.
“They have a lot of new talent on their team, and they’ve kind of restructured their roster along the way and have some really good attacking pieces, some really good defending pieces,” Curtin said. “We’ll have our hands full, but it certainly is definitely a different group than it was in the beginning of the season.”
The Union, meanwhile, are the same group, one likely to be diminished by injuries. Andre Blake will miss a third straight game with his lacerated hand, granting John McCarthy his eighth consecutive start. Ilsinho is dealing with a groin issue that could result in a sports hernia, Curtin said, but is a matter of pain tolerance for the Brazilian. Oguchi Onyewu is also trying to shake a groin injury.
More difficult to shed is the deflation of last week’s 3-0 loss to Montreal, which likely dooms the Union’s playoff hopes. But until the math formally eliminates them, Curtin is still hoping a lot of self-determination and a little MLS wackiness could help them break through.
“It’s a hard loss to take for the guys because we knew that with a result there, we could put ourselves back in the thick of things,” Curtin said. “Now we have to chase, which is tough.”