San Jose Earthquakes GM poses with one of 2019’s talent acquisitions, Andy Rios. Photo credit: ISI Photos/San Jose Earthquakes
Jesse Fioranelli was announced as San Jose Earthquakes General Manager in January 2017 as a mild surprise. He was a former agent with experience in analytics and particularly close connections to his native Switzerland and Italy, where he worked with Roma and others. He had just turned 37, and within weeks, had already spoken to the media and fans more than John Doyle had in his many years on the job, all in one of his (several) secondary languages. His words were attractive to the fans, speaking of philosophy, building from top to bottom, and competing in a way more befitting of the once-MLS champions.
Now, of course, things are a mess. The Quakes aren’t just last in the West, but they’re getting repeatedly humiliated. After spending big in the offseason, and with a famous coach at the helm, rather than improvement on a team that had strong underlying metrics and almost made the playoffs, the wheels have fallen off.
Who is to blame is a reasonable question, and that’s why I’m writing a three part series on the three most influential people on the results. Earlier this week, I covered ownership. Later, I’ll examine Matías Almeyda. Today, for the second part, I’ll exhaustively dig through Fioranelli’s term as General Manager, and each of the aspects under his control.
As always, you can reference my famous roster spreadsheet, which has the best of my guesses and information as to the current contracts and transfers on the team.
Transfers
Full transfers are what make or break an MLS GM, due to the salary rules. If you can’t hit on these, both at the top end of the roster and filling out the middle, you won’t be in the MLS playoffs, period.
There are a few different groupings of Fioranelli’s transactions within this category, for me: first, the major transfers, second, the minor transfers, and third, the “Almeyda” transfers.
For major transfers, by which I mean DP/TAM deals, it’s a mixed bag, but mostly good. Within his first months on the job, Fioranelli brought on Jahmir Hyka, Florian Jungwirth, Danny Hoesen, and Vako. Whatever your opinion of each of those players specifically, that represented an absolutely humungous upgrade on the talent that was available at the time, and even the least effective of that group (Hyka) provided solid output. In fact, three of those four are still on the roster and playing key roles in the first team. Moreover, this group took excellent advantage of the then-new TAM rule, making their fit in the roster smoother.
In 2018, Fioranelli added Guram Kashia and Magnus Eriksson on effective TAM deals. Those two were mainstays in the club all the way through the present day, only interrupted when Eriksson recently re-joined his old Swedish club. Eriksson in particular was under appreciated by fans, but his strong underlying numbers, combined with the obvious downturn in performances in his absence, do indicate his value. Kashia is arguably the team’s top defender, even though he’s in a system not particularly well-suited to his strengths.
In 2019, Fioranelli pulled off two moves that for me are absolutely top-drawer in all dimensions. He signed Judson on an initial season-long loan with an option to buy. His salary was barely half of the DP threshold, and the option was cheap. But his influence on the field is immense (just look at the difference between the pre-pandemic 2020 Quakes and the Orlando version), and Fioranelli himself once told me that he’d be on the USMNT if he had an American passport. I agree. Marcos López had just debuted for the Peru national team at 19, and based on what my sources say, came on a fee (due to a release clause) that was so tiny the selling club asked it not to be publicized. He had a very rocky first season, but that’s not uncommon for a kid at such a young age coming to a foreign country. In 2020, finally healthy, he looks like the Quakes left back of the future.
The minor deals are, for me, a bit more spotty. Joel Qwiberg was an unmitigated disaster, not even at USL level. Francois Affolter was about replacement level as a center-back, yet required a decent-sized salary and an international slot. Harold Cummings and Marco Ureña were both productive but middle-of-the roading signings. Yeferson Quintana, at a similar price point to those two, was nothing to write home about. He did, however, manage to snag Eric Calvillo for a nominal fee from the Cosmos, and bring him on modest wages. I love Calvillo, and think he could be a major part of the first team in coming years.
That leaves us with what I’m calling the “Almeyda transfers” or those that are so inextricably tied up in Almeyda’s influence that it would be misleading to assign all responsibility (good and bad) to Fioranelli. In fact, it’s something I’ll discuss again in part 3 about Almeyda.
In this group are Cristian Espinoza, Daniel Vega, Oswaldo Alanís, Carlos Fierro, and Andy Ríos. On the plus side, Espinoza and Alanís are not just excellent talents who made the first team better, the financial terms associated with both are dramatically better than what you’d expect in the market: Espinoza transferred for just $2.5 million from a La Liga club, in his prime, after a subsidized loan, and San Jose is paying less than half of Alanís’s salary. Major kudos to Jesse on the financial terms and of course they’re excellent players, but neither would likely have even considered the Earthquakes if not for the presence of Almeyda. On the other side of the ledger are Vega, Fierro, and Ríos, all of whom have certainly made some contributions to the first team, but have mostly been at or just above replacement level in production despite costing huge amounts between salaries and transfers, and all three occupying international slots. Of course, all three were very obviously pushed for by Almeyda himself, given his personal connection to them. Almeyda giveth, Almeyda taketh away.
One other note: Fioranelli has done almost nothing in the domestic market. The only player he’s ever acquired from another MLS team is Dom Oduro, and that essentially doesn’t count. However, he managed to extract excellent returns in exchange for Fatai Alashe and Aníbal Godoy. Fioranelli insists they scout the domestic market thoroughly, but I find it hard to believe that there were not domestic, low-cost options to fill some of the holes in the roster that were filled with higher-cost players who took up international slots.
Overall, what I see is a picture of generally doing decently well with the bigger transfers (to mix sports analogies, hitting a lot of singles and doubles, but with few home runs or strike outs), while more or less exempting him from evaluation of the Almeyda transfers, for good and bad. The problem is, when you’re a low-spending club like San Jose, you need your talent evaluation to be more or less perfect if you’re going to compete with bigger clubs. There’s no margin for error.
On the other hand, the financial dimensions of these transactions are truly excellent, and I’m saying that as a self-professed authority on football finances in general and the San Jose Earthquakes salaries in particular. That’s not the kind of thing that gets the fans out of their seats, but it’s essential for long-term over-performance of your spending rank, and it’s one of the truest signs of whether or not a GM is competent.
I should also note that this is a category that ought to be fairly easy to improve with a tiny bit more investment from the club. Given that talent identification is just average, surely Fioranelli would do better in an environment with more than a single scout at his disposal? Or literally any analytics staff? His financial brain, paired with a larger and more sophisticated recruitment staff, and possibly a bit more transfer money to take advantage of the pandemic market, and you can imagine more successful recruitment going forward.
Coaches
The most important decision GMs ever make is who to put in charge of the roster they’ve assembled. As the old saying goes, a soccer manager can make a team 10% better or 30% worse. In 2017, Jesse inherited Dominic Kinnear, a club legend as a long time Quakes player and coach, who is one of the three winningest coaches in MLS history, although one whom fans argued had the game in the US pass him by.
It’s no secret that I liked Kinnear more than just about any other fan, and think he was under appreciated (which is not, of course, the same thing as thinking that he was the long-term solution in San Jose). But he managed to bring a fairly mediocre group of players, back when his DPs were Wondo and Simon Dawkins, to a playoff place and a respectable, above-league average xG differential per game by the middle of the season. Fioranelli fired him six months into his tenure, after a win, and replaced him with Chris Leitch, who had never managed before (and hasn’t since).
Leitch managed to replicate Dom’s points per game in the standings, with the benefit of new DP Vako, and fans preferred his wide open style, but the underlying metrics (xGD/game) went towards the very bottom of the league. Fioranelli replaced Leitch, who was very clearly an interim manager the entire time even if he didn’t carry that label, by the end of the season, with Mikael Stahre.
Stahre, I don’t need to tell the kind of person who reads this blog, was perfectly awful. The Quakes regressed from “mediocre” under Kinnear/Leitch to the literal bottom of the league in 2018, and their underlying metrics followed that drop precisely. He was fired before the end of his first season in charge, and Steve Ralston saw out the dumpster fire.
Prior to the 2019 season, the supernova came: Fioranelli somehow managed to convince Matías Almeyda (yes THAT Almeyda), fresh off a CONCACAF Champions League Trophy and being named CONCACAF Men’s Coach of the Year with Chivas de Guadalajara, to join up with the club. It was a huge deal, as I myself wrote at the time.
I’ll detail more about how I think Almeyda has done in San Jose in the third part of this piece, but you have to give credit to Fioranelli for having the ambition to get a coach of his level, and, less appreciated, the amount he would have to subvert his ego and his own decision-making power to such a coach. Power to execute “Almeyda transfers” are not handed out to just any coach. That speaks well of Fioranelli. Fioranelli has backed Almeyda in both 2019 and 2020, financially and with the players of his choosing, and even forcing Reno to adopt a different tactical system to match Almeyda’s style. There’s no dimension on which it could be said Fioranelli hasn’t given Almeyda what he needs, within the constraints of the club.
However, the results haven’t been ideal. In 2019, the club very nearly managed to sneak into the playoffs, had an excellent xGD/game (distinctly better than Kinnear, the previous best manager under Fioranelli), and provided exciting, must-watch football for fans on the pitch. On the other hand, the team disintegrated down the stretch, and could just as easily look abject as excellent. Unfortunately, it was not a prelude to better things to come: 2020 has been worse, statistically, than even the dreadful Mikael Stahre teams, which had far less talent and didn’t have the supposed genius Almeyda at the helm. They sit bottom of the league, and are getting repeatedly humiliated. Something is deeply wrong here, and the gradual increase in the talent level of MLS is not nearly enough to explain why results have gotten that bad.
For me, this is one of the weaker areas of Fioranelli’s management. Cycling through four managers in his first two years, quite literally getting worse xGD/game from one to the next in each instance, is a bad sign. If you’re going to make a change, you gotta get better, not worse. I’m also not convinced that Almeyda is the right man for San Jose, which I’ll discuss in part three. Fioranelli needs to have a firmer hand on the tiller and a bit more patience in this category, but deserves huge credit for the ambition and humility required to get a coach of Almeyda’s stature.
Academy
In the John Doyle era, precisely one academy product (Tommy Thompson) was signed to the first team. In the Jesse Fioranelli era, we already have six, and up to eight if you count Nick Lima (who signed just before Fioranelli was named) and Drake Callender (whose rights were exercised and then traded to Inter Miami for GAM).
Clearly, the academy has been more productive, and the club has been much more proactive at signing players at younger ages if they believe they had pro potential. Not just the numbers, as described above, but you have some extraordinary talents: Cade Cowell is practically MLS starting-caliber at age 16, Casey Walls and Gilbert Fuentes have gotten significant notice at the US Youth Levels, Jacob Akanyirige looked utterly at home in his first MLS start, and JT Marcinkowski was due to be the US’s starting keeper at the Olympics (Emi Ochoa isn’t even legally allowed to drive yet so I won’t put the pressure of an evaluation on him). There are even some other names out there, currently in college or high school, who could be added to the list in coming years.
Make no mistake, that’s a good return for just about any club in the US. It comes with a huge financial advantage against the cap, and of the nine total players discussed above, only two of them are in their prime playing years, so the best returns from that group are likely ahead of us.
Some of this is the result of the long-term investment in the academy and the management of Chris Leitch, who has always been given significant oversight of this area. But you need to credit Fioranelli for his boldness in signing youth, as well. Also credit to him for very clearly realizing that slots 24-30 on an MLS roster are much better utilized signing extremely young prospects than first team regulars, given that major European first teams themselves rarely have more than 24 senior players.
I am, of course, aware of the critique that the academy’s best prospects largely come from poaching from other clubs in Central Valley (Thompson, Akanyirige, Fuentes, and Cowell all fit this mold). That certainly presents a problem for once the Sacramento Republic joins MLS and Oakland Roots starts pushing its weight around at the USL level, since the talent pool will be narrowed geographically. But make no mistake: identifying and recruiting youth from outside your own academy is the norm across world football. Jordan Morris and DeAndre Yedlin, the supposed treasures of the Sounders academy, were recruited from other youth clubs and only spent a single year with Seattle. It’s also quite difficult: scouting and recruiting at the youth level is harder than at the senior level, and there’s a reason that certain clubs always remain at the top of producing youth talent. It’s not just their ability to improve young players’ games.
To me, that speaks to the strength of the youth set up. Top marks so far, partially based on what I expect to be the future returns from this category.
Draft
Fioranelli’s first draft, just weeks into the job in 2017, was a home run and a half: they snagged franchise player Jackson Yueill with the 6th overall pick, on a long-term, cost-controlled Generation Adidas contract. Yueill is now, of course, arguably the team’s most important player and has worked his way into the US Men’s National Team. Picks that successful are rare for any team in MLS, and Fioranelli deserves credit. He also picked up Lindo Mfeka in the later rounds, who was a mainstay with Reno through their recent run of success.
In 2018, with just the 12th overall pick, San Jose was never going to replicate its previous season. They went with Paul Marie, (eventually) a domestic player who has grown into a serviceable backup on a pure minimum contract, and looking through the choices after him, represents just about as well as San Jose could’ve done from that position. In later rounds, they snagged Danny Musovski and Kevin Partida, both of whom played huge roles for Reno, with Musovski playing so well that he’s now getting serious MLS minutes for LAFC.
In 2019, the pick improved to 2nd overall, but the draft that year was, to put it bluntly, awful. Very few players have made any impact to date, with the exception of Andre Shinyashiki and Chase Gaspar. Fioranelli picked Siad Haji, the exquisitely talented but flawed prospect out of VCU, on a generation Adidas contract, which gets favorable cap treatment. Haji, unfortunately, has yet to develop the defensive and physical parts of his game that Almeyda wants to see from a contributor, but his vision and technique are amongst the very best in the organization. While Shinyashiki might have been a better pick, he’s also a foreign player, reducing his value. Gaspar was on a full on-cap contract. As such, I don’t think Haji was a bad pick given the circumstances, and considering he’s still just 20 years old, the jury is still very much out. In later rounds, Fioranelli picked up Sergio Rivas, who is now a part of the Reno 1868 first team.
2020 is of course the hardest to evaluate, with the least time since it occurred, but Fioranelli did fairly well given his low draft slot (#12 again). They picked up Tanner Beason, a left-footed center back, who has already started 3 times for San Jose. At that slot in the modern draft, simply getting an MLS-level player is a success, and despite his inconsistent performances, Beason showed enough tools to imagine him growing into a genuine MLS player. Fioranelli may have even pulled a rabbit out of the hat with Jack Skahan in the later rounds, a guy the coaching staff is really high on, and might develop into an MLS player himself. At the very least, you can imagine him being dominant in Reno, as he was before the pandemic shutdown.
Generally, as you can tell, I think Fioranelli (with credit also to Chris Leitch and Ian Russell, who are heavily involved) has done quite well with the draft. The modern draft doesn’t have a huge amount of talent, but when you do hit gold, the preferentially-treated contracts can provide a huge benefit in building out the other parts of your roster. The draft is also essential for building out your USL team, which has gone quite well in recent years. Which brings us to…
USL/Pipeline to the first team
From results alone, it’s clear that Reno is a very successful club, despite not investing the way that clubs with MLS aspirations do at the USL level. They’ve scored freely throughout their existence, and never missed the playoffs. But from Jesse Fioranelli’s perspective, what really matters is how this affiliation is adding to what we see in San Jose.
The most direct form is recruiting players from the second team to sign with the first team, although honestly very few teams get much value from this mechanism (NYRB are a rare exception). Fioranelli signed Chris Wehan, Jimmy Ockford, and Luis Felipe directly from Reno, with the latter being the only one to make a major contribution in San Jose, primarily in 2018. I actually think he’s a decent player, but one uniquely poorly suited to Almeyda’s scheme. On the “misses” side of the equation is prominently Danny Musovski, the striker originally drafted by the Quakes, who finally put it all together last year in Reno only to be signed by LAFC instead. I have no inside info on the decision, but it’s painful to watch him become an off-the-bench goalscorer for LAFC still just 24 years old when we could’ve had him as (at the very least) cheap depth at a problem position.
More important, for me, is how the second team is used to develop first team talent. Reno has been an excellent place for JT Marcinkowski, Eric Calvillo, and Marcos López to get significant minutes before they were truly ready for first team duty, and the latter has already emerged as a transformed man. As those who follow this blog know, I am a huge fan of Calvillo and Marcinkowski, and would expect them to also end up as success stories for Reno’s developmental capacity.
There are a few players whose development remains a bit stalled, for me, particularly Siad Haji and Gilbert Fuentes, although injury plays a part in the latter. The particularly huge issue for them, as well as draftee Jack Skahan, is that the 2020 Quakes made the decision to effectively separate the first and second team due to coronavirus testing and segregation requirements, so players are not getting sent down to Reno on a week-to-week basis as in prior years. Those three could each badly use the game time for development, and simply won’t be getting it this year.
Overall, I’d say the Reno management has been successful. However, there are a few players, like Musovski, Calvillo, and Marcinkowski, who appear to be stuck in between Reno’s developmental capacity and the chance to feature prominently in the first team. Until that bridge is crossed more consistently, Fioranelli only gets a passing grade, rather than flying colors, in this area.
Extensions/Existing Roster Management
One of the hallmark features of the John Doyle era was the albatross contract: a deal whose (guaranteed) length and size ruined roster construction ability for years at a time. We’re talking Simon Dawkins, Innocent Emeghara, Quincy Amarikwa’s extension, and Jean-Baptiste Pierazzi.
Luckily, Fioranelli has done an exceptional job at avoiding those sort of backbreaking deals through a combination of shorter guaranteed periods with more optionality/incentives and stronger overall negotiation. Truly, the only deal I think is a poor one from that perspective is Andrew Tarbell’s extension, handed to him as he became the starter in 2018, that aged extremely poorly. However, they got out of it just 18 months later, and it was never as large of a portion of the salary cap as the albatross deals of the Doyle era. Fioranelli has also been much more proactive cutting bad deals loose, such as the Simon Dawkins buyout (which of course was a Doyle contract in the first place).
On the positive end of the ledger, he’s been very effective at retaining the existing core at reasonable rates, particularly Nick Lima, Tommy Thompson, Shea Salinas, Chris Wondolowski, and Florian Jungwirth. Not bad! He even managed to sign Aníbal Godoy to an extension as his contract wound down so that he could later sell him for a big profit. Although the real test for Fioranelli will be his ability to either re-sign Jackson Yueill or sell him for a large fee in advance of 2021, the last season of team control on his current deal.
Since Fioranelli has done a better job managing the existing roster and contracts, predictably, the balance of the roster between positions and between young and old has also improved. The club has been tied up a bit on international slots, however, and considering the level of production of some of the non-green-card-holders, I think is a valid place for criticism. international slots are valuable, as shown by the fact they literally have transfer value around the league, and I think Fioranelli could do better. I’d also say that while the super-young are well-represented on this roster, there are not nearly enough early-prime players (22-26) who are first team stalwarts, meaning that most of the team sheets are quite old. That early-prime age group is essential for building teams that have a period of success over a 3-4 year cycle, which we just aren’t seeing right now.
However, generally, this is an area where the former agent shines, as you might expect: he’s a much more shrewd negotiator than his predecessor, and that means there’s always much more flexibility going forward than there was before. If I had to boil down the two most important mandates for a GM, one of course would be to build a roster than can win this year. The second is to provide pathways to improvement or change in the future. Jesse has done an excellent job at the latter, if not always on the former.
Conclusion/Prognosis
Fioranelli is a popular target for Quakes fans venting their frustration, and I get it: he makes himself visible (which is a good thing!) and he’s ultimately responsible for a roster that simply isn’t getting it done.
But I always have the same question in mind: what alternative exactly do you think is out there that would lead to a particularly different result? Elite directors of football around the world are few and far between, and the ones who are celebrated over long periods of time (rather than just in moments of glory) are even rarer. As I argued earlier this week, while not the sole cause of the current troubles, the spending limits at the club will always constrain the person whose job it is to assemble talent. I just simply can’t imagine that there are many executives out there who are both 1) willing to take the San Jose job and 2) provide a major upgrade on Jesse’s decision-making given the constraints of the club.
For me, Fioranelli has done a better-than-average job, with clear strengths and weaknesses. He’s done very well at managing the financial and negotiation angles, and has genuinely breathed life into the academy and USL pipeline. He has an ok, but not elite record of talent identification, which is exposed primarily because a club that spends like San Jose needs to always beat the market if it’s going to contend. His coaching decisions are very understandable but have yet to fully match his larger project.
What’s before us is what will be one of the most consequential off-seasons in San Jose Earthquakes history. By my count, you have up to 13 players whose contracts are not guaranteed for next year, including a bunch of TAM players, a DP, and several other franchise cornerstones. You have an all-time buyers market as clubs around the world are cash strapped. You have an opening up of the salary rules under the new CBA. That’s as close to a blank slate as a GM could ever hope for.
As such, I personally still have confidence in Jesse Fioranelli. But what he does this offseason, and the early returns on it we see in 2021, will be the definitive proof in the pudding. By the end of 2021, what you see is what you get, and the verdict should be in either way.
