Alex Covelo, head coach of Earthquakes II and Director of Methodology for Quakes Academy, watches training at Earthquakes preseason in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Back in 2021, then general manager Jesse Fioranelli announced at a preseason meeting with Bay Area soccer media that a “second team” was joining the San Jose Earthquakes preseason. For the past year, games have been popping up here and there for the “Earthquakes U-23” team.
At that time the MLS Next Pro league (part of the third division of the US Soccer pyramid) was just a rumor called the “U-23 league” or another “reserve league”, but the league has finally launched this past weekend with several games already, including an opening night introduction for St. Louis CITY, next year’s MLS debutant, with their St. Louis CITY 2 team (capital letters intentional, it seems).
Alex Covelo and the Earthquakes II get their first opportunity to play an official game Wednesday night in Portland against Timbers 2, a team that is not new at all, having been in USL Championship for several seasons now.
Covelo knows this is a big moment for the organization, “We see the light right now. We are happy. The guys are from the [Quakes] Academy or from Northern California. They have been working a lot to start this new history and this new adventure.”
As part of the Earthquakes organization since 2017, Covelo, who has a UEFA A coaching license, has provided a wealth of knowledge and experience in helping to make the academy an emerging success story among MLS academies with teams that are now bursting with talent and players who are turning heads. Covelo even had a short stint as an Earthquakes assistant coach, helping Chris Leitch when he was behind the bench in 2017. Prior to the Earthquakes, Covelo was the head of methodology for La Liga’s RCD Espanyol and coached San Marino in Italy’s third division. He speaks four languages: Spanish, Catalán, Italian, and English, and our interview was conducted entirely in English. Although we had a translator present, just in case, there wasn’t any need for translation.
The league has announced that all games this season will be streamed on mlsnextpro.com, and home games for Quakes II will be played at PayPal Park and be accessible to fans. For the first time for a full 90 minutes, fans will get to see many homegrowns like Emi Ochoa, Casey Walls, and Gilbert Fuentes who they have been asking to see, presumably along with MLS SuperDraft signings like Oskar Ågren, George Asomani, and Siad Haji who often miss being in the game-day 20, although player movement between the two leagues and teams is still a bit of a mystery.
When I asked about player movement between the first and second teams, Covelo referred me to Leitch for more details given the league’s roster rules and mechanisms, “At the end of the day we want to provide opportunities for the players we have, and we see the potential of them taking the next step — also young players the first team have. The communication has to be very clear with Matias [Almeyda], and if he wants to send some players to play with us — and if they are able to do it — we are obviously going to do it because they need to keep playing minutes. That’s the challenge of the second team: to find that balance between the players that come to you from the first team to get minutes, and the players that you want to keep challenging to take that next step.”
While the official roster is not yet posted on the league website, the team recently put out a press release of players who have signed second team contracts. Among these players are Quakes Academy products like Christopher “CJ” Grey from Cal Berkeley, Eric De La Cerda who played for Reno 1868 while on the Quakes Academy U-19 team, and forward Eduardo “Lalo” Blancas. Also included in the roster are players from local universities such as San Jose State and UC Davis.
One of the interesting questions for me has been the style that Earthquakes II will play. Will they play in the style of the first team or the one that Covelo and Leitch have adapted for the Quakes Academy which is a mix of their initial 2017 methodology and the methodology Almeyda brought to the first team in 2019?
Covelo sees the answer as a blend of the styles with doses of Almeyda’s pressing and 1v1 methods played with a higher intensity that has been integrated over time with the methodology he, Leitch, and Quakes Academy coaches, with Almeyda’s input since 2019, have developed and been successful with. “In the last two years, we have seen the results, right? Now we can see a clear style from the bottom to the top. When Matias came, we had different meetings to understand each other and had very good conversations. Together with Chris and Jesse, we agreed it was going to be difficult to adopt the style for the younger [academy players]. With the older [academy players], we could adopt certain areas of Matias’ style.”
Almeyda has given Covelo and the academy coaches a lot of freedom, telling them, “you have to be yourselves” and agreeing on the areas of adaptation. Covelo is adapting even more of Almeyda’s style in Quakes II to make the pathway to the first team easier for the second team players, but it will be rooted in the methodology that the Quakes Academy and homegrown players have known since 2017.
Covelo very much sees Quakes II as a uniquely Bay Area team, “All the players that we have in the second team, their dream is to play in the first team. That’s why they are with us. I see their potential. They are all from the [Bay] Area. The most important thing is to teach them in what way they need to field that shield they are going to wear in the second team, so it’s something that we can be proud of in the immediate future. This city is their house — their home — and they need to fight for that shield every day.”
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See the 2022 Earthquakes II schedule here.
Read the five things to know about Alex Covelo here (from 2017).
Read the Earthquakes II press releases and get more information about tickets here.
Watch all the games, including Wednesday’s Earthquakes II opener on MLSNextPro.com here.
