The San Jose Earthquakes finally parted ways with Coach Mikael Stahre, who managed the second-worst PPG of any coach in MLS history en route to not even making it through the first season of his three year, $1.2 million contract. If anything, the move was significantly overdue, with the team out of the playoff race for about 3 months now, and no underlying statistics pointing toward improvement.
But as in all things, getting hung up on the mistakes of the past won’t help San Jose dig itself out of its hole. One point I’d like to make is that I don’t believe an unwillingness to spend is the cause of San Jose’s trouble: their salaries have been right in the middle of the league ever since Avaya stadium opened, and I’m willing to bet it’ll return there once the MLS Players Association puts out its end-of-season salary survey shortly. That doesn’t even take into account the large transfer spending to bring in the likes of Vako and Eriksson, nor the massive buyout costs for Simon Dawkins and Mika Stahre. Moreover, the club is running an Academy and USL operation that is actually fairly well regarded in league circles, and has multiplied its front-office staffing. Oh yeah, and plenty of other teams (notably NYRB, Dallas, and Houston) have done quite a lot more with much less money available.
For me, then, it’s not the lack of spending: it’s the decision-making of the spenders. As such, starting immediately, here’s what I recommend the club do to return to respectability, roughly in order of when they’ll occur:
Concede the last 6 games as purely evaluation exercises
One of the oddest things about the Mikael Stahre experience has been how little rotation we saw in terms of heavy minutes on the first team, outside of particular trouble areas like center-back and left-back, even once the playoffs were out of reach. For all those regulars, the front office should have an extremely clear evaluation already in the books for how much quality those players bring in exchange for their roster charge, and what exactly their stylistic fit on the pitch is.
For everyone else, they need to use these 6 games to develop that sharp picture. Quite a few marginal players haven’t been seen in a while, but some of them may still have a future with the club. Harold Cummings should get an extended run-out with Guram Kashia by his side, Tommy Thompson should get a look in the new 5-midfielder formation that should showcase his game better (whether for San Jose coaches or other coaches in the league who might trade for him), and the still-young Jackson Yueill should be playing just about every minute the rest of the way. Chris Wehan has mostly played off the bench or out of position for the Quakes this year, so I’d like to see how he would look in the starting XI as a left midfielder.
There are also a few players on first-team contracts who are down with the USL club that might deserve a look, including Mo Thiaw (ST), Eric Calvillo (CM), and Paul Marie (RB). I put J.T. Marcinkowski in a different category, since there should be no doubt about his quality, and no doubt about whether he moves above Tarbell on the depth chart to start 2019. Gilbert Fuentes (CM), who is a can’t-miss prospect, is still quite a long way away from MLS-level, but maybe you give him his debut in the low-pressure environment of a last-place club seeing out its season.
A side bonus of this is all but assuring a last-place finish in the league, which gives the Quakes the second overall pick in the MLS SuperDraft and Allocation Rankings (expansion team Cincinnati FC takes the first slot). While the SuperDraft is not the richest talent acquisition mechanism available to teams, those top 3 slots tend to contain starting-level talent, or at least generate generous trade offers from others farther down the order. The Allocation Order, similarly, can be an extremely valuable trade asset depending on who is coming over. They’re small ways to rebuild in the midst of a disaster, but they shouldn’t be overlooked.
Clear the teams books of bad contracts
To be clear, there are some players not seeing playing time that I don’t think require any further observation to make a call. Dominic Oduro is well past his prime and is on an expiring contract. Yeferson Quintana simply wasn’t good enough, and his loan deal expires at the end of the year. Francois Affolter has another guaranteed year, but we’ve seen enough of him to know that he should be shifted if possible. Joel Qwiberg was never MLS level, and we can only hope that his contract was structured in such a way that San Jose can get out of it soon. Those players alone account for two international slots and a staggering $1 million in annual salaries, which will be useful for the rebuild.
The trickier set of players are those guys who may be talented enough to justify a roster slot, but for a combination of age, salary, and willingness to stick around in San Jose, might not be the best fit going forward. Anibal Godoy clearly would love to play at a decent European level, and he might fetch a transfer fee to do so. Jahmir Hyka is perfectly good, but costs a lot, and is at the very end of his career. Jesse will need to make some hard decisions about the bigger pieces on his roster to give himself enough flexibility to sign difference-makers.
Anyone I haven’t specifically mentioned is someone I view as clearly justifying their place on the roster given their contract situation.
Get the coach hire right
It almost doesn’t matter what you do to this roster if you don’t put a competent coach in charge. And truly, I only mean “competent,” not “elite.” Dominic Kinnear was a competent coach, and that’s what I would consider the minimum necessary threshold for this hire, as much as I’m sure fans love hearing poorly-sourced rumors about Peter Bosz being “interviewed,” whatever that means (and it certainly doesn’t mean an actual interview, since it takes longer to set up a formal interview than a day or two).
If the ownership group wants to significantly up its spending on its coaching staff and pursue a big name, more power to them. That puts more pressure on the GM to get the hire right, from a personality and tactics perspective, however, because it increases the cost of failure. Don’t bring in a big name in order to appease the fans, because that could well make things even worse if it goes sour. Coaches who have a record of developing talent, and getting more out of less, should be the order of the day (think Eddie Howe, Sean Dyche, José Luis Mendilibar etc). Avoid coaches who have strong track records of performance but are regarded as difficult personalities, like Caleb Porter or Miguel Herrera, who will almost certainly exacerbate the extremely negative atmosphere around the club.
A much safer option, in my opinion, is to promote Ian Russell from his Reno post. He’s been extremely successful in each of his two seasons there, taking players who probably aren’t top-of-the-heap in terms of talent in USL to strong showings on the table and excellent goalscoring productivity. Moreover, his teams look well-coached, and his players appear to enjoy playing in his system, both of which are factors not to be overlooked. Regardless of actual coaching prowess, Russell has deep roots in San Jose, coaching as an assistant ever since the 2008 reboot, and playing for the club from 2000-2005 during those glory years. I think that sort of cultural understanding and continuity will do quite a lot to settle tensions, and would win fan support. Worst case, he wouldn’t come with a brutal buyout number if a big name did become available.
Regardless of who the coach is, clear tactical instructions and an organized defense are a must in order to stop the bleeding. Kinnear doubtless put out less-sexy products on the field than fans wanted (although remember, he had even less talent to work with than what we currently have), but there were no humiliations, and it never seemed like players didn’t know what they were doing. There were no bizarre, shape-wrecking substitutions that became a trademark Stahre move. This should not be a tall ask, but it requires an experienced, respected hand on the wheel. I prefer that to the saccharine, unrealized dreams of soccer revolution that Fioranelli promised.
Solve the chemistry crisis. Be brutal if necessary.
Of course, there’s an old adage that winning leads to good chemistry and losing leads to bad chemistry, not the other way around. There’s some truth to that. But it’s obvious there are problems in this locker room, and between the locker room and management, that go beyond merely being a losing team.
I don’t profess to know exactly how these issues started, or who is to “blame” for them, but the Front Office sure as heck should have a good idea of it. From my knowledge, there is an old-guard American/MLS contingent (led by Wondo) that dislikes Fioranelli’s approach, a new-guard European import contingent (led by Flo) that tends to look down on MLS’s old ways, and a Latino contingent, that more or less feels ignored and undervalued and therefore isn’t particularly “bought in” to the project. Fioranelli needs to potentially get rid of some guys who, despite large salaries and inarguable talent, might be the wrong personality fit for the creation of a cohesive roster. I’m specifically thinking of Flo Jungwirth and Vako, who I believe would be able to draw transfer fees back to Europe if solicited, but would leave major talent gaps to be filled.
The tricky thing here is, a lot of times solving a chemistry issue isn’t about getting rid of “bad apples” and replacing them with “good apples,” the issue is more about picking sides in philosophical and personal conflicts between otherwise perfectly professional players. In the Wondo v. Flo debate, Fioranelli did take action to remove players who were problematic from a chemistry perspective when he shipped out Quincy Amarikwa and Fatai Alashe (both of whom were on expiring contracts), although both of those players were on the Wondo side of the divide. Will he have the humility and courage to take the same actions against players who are on the side that mostly supports him? I think he will need to in order to ever heal those wounds. And anything that marginalizes Chris Wondolowski personally, and the ethos he stands by, is probably a bad call both from a fan’s perspective and a personnel perspective.
Make decisions on the internal pipeline and bring them on by the end of 2018
The Quakes, as mentioned above, actually have a pretty decent Academy and USL setup, and have a few players I could see making the leap from each category. I’m not entirely certain that any of them will become starters in 2019, but they are extremely budget-effective, create useful depth, and usually are a positive contribution to chemistry since they have loyalty to the organization and younger players tend to be more coachable.
From the Academy, I could see Christopher “C.J.” Grey, a left-back from Cal, and Amir Bashti, an attacking midfielder from Stanford, signing Homegrown deals. Given the dreadful left-back situation, Grey might actually be an important addition to the roster, and he’s regarded as a decent prospect. Bashti, the top prospect from his class while in the Academy, has had some lackluster years at Stanford but appears to be turning the corner in his last season on the Farm.
From USL, there are two distinct categories: guys with first-team contracts, mentioned above, and those who are signed to the affiliate directly. Of the latter category, Brian Brown (ST) and Duke Lacroix (LB) are the two I see as most likely to fit a need for the first team. Brown is already close to developed as a prospect, and he has both the tenacity and the skills to serve as a capable backup striker in MLS. Lacroix is still a long way away in his development, for my money, but he has a high enough ceiling, and his position is in such dire need, that it might be worth a try.
Actually bother to look inside MLS
Fioranelli has made precisely one acquisition from inside MLS in the form of Dominic Oduro in what was essentially a chemistry-saving salary swap that had nothing to do with actually acquiring talent. Admittedly, the arcane MLS roster rules do incentivize foreign spending as the easiest way to inject quality into your roster.
However, it turns out the league has a lot of good players, and they come with the added benefit of knowing exactly how their skill level and skillset look in MLS, which is always an unknown for foreign-based players. Many of the American (or other long-time MLSers, who are largely Latin American) weren’t brought into the league via expensive TAM or DP mechanisms, and are on modest contracts. They might not be stars, but guys like Seth Sinovic and Chris Pontius are out there filling important roles and contributing to their team winning.
I simply refuse to believe that San Jose can’t find any deals of at least as good value within the league as outside of it. A left back would be an excellent place to start, but just about any spare parts would be useful on a roster as poor as this one.
Nail the 3rd DP slot
While Magnus Eriksson has not impressed fans in his first season (I have notably dissented from that view), his salary is below the DP threshold, so once his transfer fee was bought out, it opened up a slot. That means that San Jose has at least one full DP slot open going into the offseason that they can use to sign a difference-maker to the roster.
That doesn’t mean they necessarily need to back up the Brinks truck in the winter window, however. Many of the elite players who join the league do so in the summer window, because it fits in better with European schedules. Perhaps we’ll need to wait. But it’s the most powerful card Fioranelli has to play in this offseason, so he has to get it right.
So where to use it? I actually don’t exactly know, and it depends deeply on how you see the team setting up next year. One of the issues in Fioranelli’s roster-construction is that it has sort of boxed in what any coach can do with his players, since so many of the core pieces only fit together in one way (Vako needs to be assigned pretty much a free offensive role, Wondo needs to play off a striker, Eriksson can only serve as a wide creator because he has no pace, etc). That can be fine if you’re recruiting very specifically into a particular system, but MLS traditionally has rewarded managers who are good at adapting to the talent they have available, rather than rigid tactical ideologues.
If the new coach goes with a European 4-3-3, with Vako on the left wing, the logical place for a DP investment would be a passing-oriented central midfielder. If the system is instead the flat 4-4-2 that Stahre preferred, perhaps an elite true left winger to allow Vako to move permanently up top. Maybe you go for Ian Russell’s diamond 4-4-2, with Vako in the hole, and invest in a DP striker to pair with Wondo up top. None of the options are great, if we’re being honest, and that’s why having a tactically clear-eyed coach who can manage to fit these parts together is so important.
Just as a note, Wondo’s salary is not hugely above the DP threshold, so he can be TAM’d down to open up yet another slot if necessary, but given the structure of the team’s salary, that would probably put limits on how much salary could be spent on the team’s depth, which would be a real issue, and I wouldn’t exactly recommend.
Work to win back the fans’ trust even before opening day
Fans are rightly furious about the way the team has been managed since Fioranelli has taken over. Not only have the results been even worse than in the previous two year period under Kinnear/Doyle, the team’s identity and respectability have disintegrated. Moreover, the GM’s public comments and transaction strategy have spoken to a streak of arrogance, and perhaps an underestimation of MLS. All the while season ticket prices continue to climb.
I think that taking general responsibility and admitting very specific mistakes are a good step in that direction. That’s very different than his post-firing-Stahre press conference, where he basically said that he liked Stahre as a coach and was frustrated that it didn’t work out. Instead, acknowledge you made a mistake in your evaluation, and that the poor results weren’t merely bad luck. Acknowledge that you’ve had two years to fix the fullbacks situation but, if anything, have gone backwards in both quality and depth. Acknowledge that you may have incorrectly assessed the relative strength of European leagues and players and American/Latin American ones. Be more humble about your promises to change the culture and results, and give more respect to the worthwhile things about existing San Jose club culture (obviously, not all of it was working).
I’ve been a Quakes (or Clash) fan since I was a young kid, and one reason I love this fanbase so much is that it sticks by its team no matter how bad the results are, an ethos embodied most vociferously by the San Jose Ultras. We want teams that work hard, appreciate the fans, actually want to be here, and never give up.
No doubt, San Jose can do better than just that. But we’re asking for at least that. This offseason, through moves like those I suggested above, perhaps we’ll get it.
