PHOTO: ISI Photos
After a disappointing home draw where San Jose levelled the score with a deflected Jahmir Hyka shot, the Earthquakes go on their longest road trip of the year to face off against white-hot Orlando City. The Lions have won three straight by throwing caution to the wind and filling the midfield with attacking players. The results have shown this, with 4-3 and 3-2 wins against Red Bulls and Portland respectively before shutting out Philadelphia on the road last weekend.
Meanwhile, San Jose is still struggling for an identity. They tried a 5-3-2 for some time two weeks ago before last week’s 4-3-3 and neither one was convincing. The Earthquakes keep giving up possession in the backfield and forcing Andrew Tarbell to make saves that would seem more heroic if he wasn’t the one making errant passes to begin with.
Even though they have to travel nearly 3,000 miles (only New England’s Gillette Stadium is farther away from Avaya), San Jose actually matches up well against Orlando and ought to be able to take the flight back home with points in tow.
Godoy key to Earthquakes’ success
It may be difficult to remember how San Jose blew the doors off of opening weekend. The 4-2-2-2 and the counterpress made life miserable for Minnesota United. San Jose’s two first-half goals came off of pressure turnovers (a clearance which Florian Jungwirth headed straight to Vako and a ball deflected off of Chris Wondolowski). The third was keyed off a pass from Anibal Godoy. You may remember how it ended with MUFC defenders looking like they just witnessed a magic trick.
Godoy’s off screen to the left, but his pass to Danny Hoesen keyed off a give-and-go. Three Quakes took six defenders out of the game to pick up the winner.
San Jose hasn’t played like that since, settling for two draws and suffering two losses. It is important to note how: opponents began pressuring San Jose in a way Minnesota wasn’t able to. None of the Quakes’ centerbacks are particularly good with the ball at their feet and Tarbell has struggled with distribution. Godoy has had to move closer to goal to pick up the ball, often with his back to the San Jose attack.
It’s killed the offense before it can get started. Vako and Magnus Eriksson are picking up passes near midfield instead of on the wing, and the forwards are starved for service. The difference between Godoy’s center of positional gravity against Minnesota:
…and against Philadelphia is striking. He’s much further back in this next chart, and not making passes to dangerous positions.
San Jose tried to improve their connectivity in their last match against Houston by bringing Jackson Yueill into the midfield. Yueill is probably the best passer (and certainly the best right-footed passer) on the team and was crucial in both goals, but his defensive effort and positioning still need a lot of work.
A new midfielder
Yueill is probably the only person on the team who could have keyed the equalizer with this cross-field diagonal to Jungwirth at right back (his feet are visible at the top of the screen). Maybe Hyka can hit that switch? But there’s no way either left-footed Godoy or Magnus can move the point of attack like Yueill does here:
Unfortunately, he can end up a bit lost on the defensive side, forcing extra effort out of his comrades in the midfield. Here Jackson is standing smack-dab in the center of the pitch on Houston’s second goal, forcing Fatai Alashe and Godoy into a defensive scramble. There’s no earthly reason a simple pass up the sideline like this should erase four defensive players from the game.
You can get a sense of how Yueill and Godoy compare through these analyses we ran. Yueill does hit key passes (KP/96, or average number of passes which lead to a shot over 96 minutes), but he does not have the general accuracy or longball skills of Godoy, to say nothing of dribbling or defensive work rate:
(Some notes: Data from WhoScored.com and AmericanSoccerAnalysis.com. The data is for 2017 and 2018, and it doesn’t include Jungwirth’s time at centerback.)
Against Houston, the Earthquakes tried to play them as complementary players. It didn’t quite work because Yueill got overrun and the ball got pinned on the sidelines with multiple defenders on Vako. San Jose will have to try something else this weekend.
How to work Orlando to the Earthquakes’ strengths
Nobody in San Jose is particularly happy with the 4-3-3, even if that extra midfielder was the young man who kept the Earthquakes in the game. A counter-pressing 4-2-2-2 can treat Orlando City like it did Minnesota—getting Vako and Magnus into space behind Yoshi Yotun and Will Johnson, who are very good midfielders that don’t particularly like to defend.
There are two big questions, however: how can San Jose get the ball out of their own half, and how do they neutralize the high-flying Orlando attack?
Stahre’s counter-press is one answer to this, as long as Yotun isn’t allowed space to pass through it like Sporting KC’s Ilie and New York City FC’s Maxi Moralez were. And to be honest, Yotun isn’t at their level. But once the ball does land in San Jose’s half, Sacha Kljestan can’t be allowed to pick his head up and someone on San Jose has to have space to start the transition.
This is why San Jose is best served by going back to the 4-2-2-2. Jungwirth is best suited to play the game in Kljestan’s pocket; cutting off angles fits Flo’s game more than getting into a wrestling match with Dom Dwyer. And outside of the indefatigable Dwyer, nobody on Orlando can really follow through on the press. Having both Jungwirth and Godoy as options to stretch out Dwyer’s chasing will help San Jose move forward.
It will be interesting to see if Stahre changes up the offense. If he wants to get Vako more involved in the attack, he could move the Georgian into the second striker role he plays with the national team and move Jahmir Hyka out to the wing. Or, if San Jose is nervous about holding possession, Quincy Amarikwa could start as a target forward to latch on to long balls.
San Jose hasn’t succeeded in keeping possession in the opponent’s half much this year, but they will need to in order to keep the ball off of Yeferson Quintana’s feet. It isn’t easy to dictate the pace of the match away from home, but the Earthquakes will either have to do that or bunker and pray—and they didn’t bring Stahre in from Sweden to play Concacaf football.
I am positive they will improve.