MLS Season Preview: San Jose Earthquakes

By: Laurie | March 18th, 2008

For the second in our MLS Preview series, we chat with our San Jose Earthquakes blogger, Melissa.

Melissa had the challenge of previewing a team that’s only been put together in the last few months. New management, new players, new owners… Old name, though. There is that. That has to make life a little easier, right?

You can find Melissa and more Earthquakes news over at San Jose Offside.

*Nuts and Bolts* — a basic overview of what your team dealt with last year and is facing this year.
Now, here’s a phenomenon that rarely exists outside of American sports – two time MLS champions, The San Jose Earthquakes, return to MLS this year as an expansion team after the old San Jose Earthquakes moved to Houston in 2005, transformed into the Dynamo, then won two more MLS championships.

But for the long-suffering Bay Area Quakes fans, our new 2008 club immediately felt like deja-vu when ex-player John Doyle signed on to be the General Manager and his first order of business was to woo ex-coach Frank Yallop back to San Jose from Los Angeles. After adding ex-players Ian Russell and Ronnie Ekelund to the staff and Joe Cannon and Ryan Cochrane to the roster, the band truly got back together… or rather, this rag-tag group of friends joined forces for the first time to build an MLS roster from scratch fueled by their love and dedication to the club’s legacy and also to help promote soccer in the region (tres romantic - no?). The whole situation evokes allegories to this or even this and I tend to switch back and forth between calling these guys The Scoobies or Our Gang.

With an Expansion Draft, a Super Draft, two Waiver Drafts, and a couple of trades behind us, we see Doyle & Yallop cautiously and meticulously building a strong group of players from the back to the front. Unfortunately, as expansion teams go, time is short and with the season almost ready to begin, we’re charging ahead with very little depth up top. Yallop insists that, when building the roster, he shouldn’t be rushed but Yallop also expects this new team to make the playoffs this year. I expect, in the beginning, we’ll see a team play very defensively with few scoring opportunities. Most bloggers and journalists will immediately call it an expansion team curse but perhaps during that first transfer window, we’ll find a good offensive player and at some unannounced and unexpected magical moment, the renowned Yallop positivity will kick in, the team will come together, and we’ll start scoring goals. We’ll slip into that last playoff spot but bounce out of the post-season in the first round. Also, the city of San Jose will unanimously approve owners Lew Wolff & Co’s plans to build a new soccer specific stadium thus assuring the club will remain in operation in Silicon Valley for decades to come.

*The star:* Who is your team built around?

Right now? No-one. Could that change in the future? Possibly, but not likely. Look for Kei Kamara to gain the confidence to properly lead our attacks on goal and Shea Salinas to gain the technical skills that, when combined with his insane speed, will make him truly dangerous.

*DP or not?* And how will that affect the team?

No plans to get a DP this year and no plans to trade the option away. Doyle says he wants a solid team first, then he may look to enhance the core with a dynamic star.

*The newcomers*: Who is going to come in and make a difference?

The entire team! Seriously though, I really believe James Riley may earn a cap based on his performance as a Quake.

*Keep an eye on:*

The fans! We’re a zealous bunch and we can’t be happier to get our club back.

*We’ll win the league if…?*

…everyone relaxes – the fans, the press, the players - ok, I really don’t want this to sound like some cheezeball George Lucas style, “use the force,” California pop-psychology bullcrap, but its kind-of true if you think about it.

*We’ll be in trouble if…?*

…we can’t build an effective and creative offense or if a few of our starters get seriously injured.

*You might not know…* Three or so facts that a non-fan might not be aware of

The club’s legacy extends waaay back to the time when people first began imagining the words “Soccer” and “America” might actually fit together. The Earthquakes existed in NASL and they were also one of the original MLS sides when the league began in 1996 (then called The San Jose Clash).

In 2001, former DC United assistant coach, Frank Yallop took the head coach job with the Quakes and subsequently inherited a team reminiscent of the Bad News Bears with one of the worst standings in the league. Within his first year, he managed to turn that mess around and take home the MLS Cup.

The longest and most heated rivalry in MLS is between San Jose and The Los Angeles Galaxy. Perhaps the biggest upset was the precarious decision in 2005 to allow Landon Donovan to return to MLS from Germany and play for Los Angeles instead of his former club (ex-Quakes GM Alexi *cough* Lalas traded away his rights). To this day, most Quakes fans consider Donovan a traitor to the team.

And my last trivia item is one that hits very close to home. The proposed site for the new soccer specific stadium was formerly occupied by defense contractors FMC. FMC was the company that built the Bradley Tank for use during the first Gulf War. They used the site not only for offices but also as an area to test their products - subsequently leaving behind a sh*tload of toxic waste the city of San Jose was forced to inherit. The summer after I graduated from high school, I took an internship at FMC and saw much of this toxic sludge firsthand. Also, the site contained an unregistered reservoir they used to float the tanks. They did all of this during a time when California was facing one of its worst droughts in decades. Needless to say, owner Lew Wolff is offering to pay to clean up this mess and build a stadium in its place. Yup, thats right y’all – San Jose Earthquakes fans can honestly say: make futbol, not war.