A Quakes U-23 player attempts to shoot in a 1-v-1 exercise against San Jose Earthquakes player Eric Remedi at the team’s preseason camp in Santa Barbara, California, in the month of March. Photo credit: San Jose Earthquakes
Wilson Eisner was at school at Cornell University when he got the invite to join the San Jose Earthquakes’ 2021 preseason camp in Santa Barbara. Most college freshmen would probably freak out about the opportunity to spend ten days training with a Major League Soccer team, but Eisner took it in stride. The Menlo Park native had been playing with San Jose’s academy for the previous six months because Cornell’s fall semester had been fully remote, and he was one of eighteen youth players called up for the camp.
In past years, select Earthquakes Academy players got the chance to train with the first team once a week, but such frequent integration was not possible this year because of Coronavirus restrictions. Instead, the club included those top academy players in the first team’s preseason camp for the first time.
“It’s a big step for our club as we try to create that linear pathway between the academy and first team,” Fioranelli said last month. “It’s a bridge. It’s going to be an important bridge for years to come. We’re trying to improve and trying to grow.” Fioranelli referred to the group of 18 players as the club’s “second team.”
Speaking to me over Zoom last week, Eisner offered an inside look at the experience.
“Obviously the main thing is just to be with the first team and get experience being in a professional environment,” he said. “It was a lot of good training.”
Each day, the team had two training sessions. Most days, they had one session on the field and one gym session at the hotel’s workout facilities or on the beach. The first team and second team were split for the gym sessions but would usually train together on the field.
Eisner said that most of the drills were focused on highly specific tactical concepts.
“We’d warm-up and then we would usually do a technical drill or rondos or some quick drill like that. Then it would be one or two more game-realistic drills.
“The sessions were intense. One of the days it was pretty much just 1-v-1 stuff. They split us into academy versus the first team and one of the drills was just going 1-v-1 at them. So it was a lot of competition.”
Almeyda’s unique man-marking scheme was obviously the focus of the defensive drills. While the first team has had two full years to perfect to the system, the second team players had only been practicing it for a few months in the academy.
“It’s obviously different,” said Eisner. “At the start, when we first did it, we were messing up, losing our marks. After we got used to it, I thought it worked pretty well. You just have to be smart about when to switch marks so that you’re not all like completely out of position.”
Eisner said the team also practiced many different passing patterns to help them build out of the back. In one drill, six first team players had to pass the ball through four academy players. They would start the ball on one side of the field and work it to the other in order to create space. Once they passed it through mini-goals on the halfway line, Almeyda would then play a ball in to one of the second team players they would try to quickly attack the goal so that the first-team players could practice their man-marking defense in a counter-attacking situation.
Although the work was intense, the atmosphere among the players was lighthearted. “[The veteran players] would joke around with us so it didn’t always feel like it there was the first team and then there was the academy,” said Eisner. “They would kind of lighten the mood and then make us feel like we belonged there.”
As punishment for losing one drill, Almeyda had all the academy players line and get pelted with shots from the first-team players. Thankfully, Eisner didn’t get hit.
In their downtime, most of the academy players also had to keep up with online school. Since Eisner’s classes overlapped a lot with the team’s training sessions, he would watch recordings of all his teachers’ lectures. “Practice was the priority,” he said with a grin.
At the end of the week, the academy players had the opportunity to play in a full 11-v-11 scrimmage with the first team. Eisner played at left-back, marking San Jose’s reigning Offensive Player of the Year Christian Espinoza. “I thought I did a pretty good job,” said Eisner. “He had one where he got in behind but I recovered so he had to pass to someone else.”
Eisner was particularly impressed by Marcos Lopez, whose pace made him difficult to mark on the wing, and by the team’s new attacking midfielder, Chofis, who dominated in possession drills. “He thinks quickly and his touch is good,” Eisner said of Chofis. “He’s pretty shifty so he’s good in tight spaces.”
Although they weren’t allowed to keep all of their practice gear from camp, the academy players did walk away with other mementos. On the final day of camp, they were told to find a player with their shoe size and take one of their extra pairs of cleats. Eisner said he nicked a pair of Adidas boots from homegrown player Jacob Akanyirige.
They also left with some important advice from Almeyda.
“He talked about being focused all the time,” said Eisner. “He said we’re all close to that level, it’s just about getting stronger and being consistent. He was pretty much just saying, ‘keep working at it, and you guys can get there someday.’”
