It’s year four. The team has taken 2 points from 18. In Matías Almeyda’s last three seasons with the San Jose Earthquakes, each one has managed to have worse underlying statistics than Mikael Stahre‘s miserable 2018, and remarkably, it’s only continued to get worse. Any progress individual players have made under him has plateaued or backslid. Collectively, it’s a tactical embarrassment. He plainly doesn’t want to be here. The coach has run out of ideas, but not of excuses.
The fact I think he should be fired should surprise no one who reads this blog or watches The Aftershock, although I would point out that I originally greeted his appointment with excitement and awe, so I take exception to those who say I am simply biased against him.
I made a fulsome case for why he was the wrong man for the job a full 18 months ago, which if anything is too generous to him in retrospect. I’d encourage you to read it if you’re interested in the substance of my argument for why the club would be better off with him. Here, I’ll present it in one simple chart:
It’s time. It has been for a long time. And yet he’s still here. So what gives?
What’s changed since late 2020 is a turn for the ugly: he’s turned his back on the club, and disrespected the fans. What I’ve heard from inside the club very much mirrors what The Athletic’s Sam Stejskal alluded to in recent tweets: that he’s decided to quit, and it’s simply now a matter of negotiation. He wants the club to fire him so they pay out his contract, whereas the club, of course, doesn’t want to pay a huge sum to an employee who has informed them he wants to leave, and who very clearly has been lining up his next job (with the most persistent rumor being Chile’s national team vacancy). Essentially, Almeyda is holding the club hostage, at the fan’s expense, in order to get paid for a job he does not want to do.
To John Fisher: I know it sucks to potentially have to pay out someone who you might be able to get rid of for free in a month or two, and who has behaved as badly as Almeyda has. But please, I’m begging you, on behalf of the fans, to bite the bullet, pay him out, and put in someone who wants to be here and gives us the potential to build toward a brighter future.
Why? Because it sucks to live through this as a fan. It sucks for one’s club to be managed by someone who doesn’t want to be here, and whose track record was frankly abysmal even before he started trying to get fired. It also sucks to have a manager who very directly disrespects fans, such as his bizarre screaming match with a fan after the game against the Red Bulls. It sucks to live through the more subtle disrespect of the fact he clearly thinks the club is beneath him.
I’d also like to point out the fundamental disrespect of Almeyda’s unwillingness to meet his minimum, league-mandated media obligations. While he has repeatedly flaunted these rules in his four seasons in San Jose, 2022 has been particularly egregious, skipping several weeks in a row for his midweek presser and entirely failing to show up to the post-game in Houston. What’s even worse is that he happily takes individual interviews with non-local outlets he likes, and his agent isn’t shy about reaching out to media either, so it’s not like he simply prefers to stay out of the limelight.
I know there are some (apparently even journalists!) who don’t have much sympathy for this outlet’s complaints about Almeyda’s constant shirking of media obligations. But you, as a fan, should care, since press conferences are essentially the only real access you have to the club that isn’t highly manicured. Sports franchises take advantage of the irrational loyalty of their fanbases by pushing them to renew their season tickets ever earlier, for ever-higher fees. The minimum they owe those fans in return is a bit of honest access and answers to legitimate questions they may have, and we in the media do our best to give that to you.
It’s also bizarre from the standpoint of a struggling club in a league that is trying to establish itself, trying to get more coverage and attention. I would like to re-emphasize that there are no reporters covering the Quakes on a full-time basis. There are relatively few professional reporters on the beat, and those typically spend a very small amount of their time on the club. Here, at Quakes Epicenter, we’re literal amateurs: our Patreon does not exist to provide compensation for our regular writers (beyond expenses directly related to covering the club) despite the untold hours we have spent over many years, outside of our day jobs, to give fans more access. The fact a manager on a seven-figure salary thinks he’s too good for those of us devoting our free time is, frankly, offensive.
Now let’s say that you agree with me that Almeyda deserves to be fired (which, to be clear, is exactly what he’s asked the club for). What comes next? And why should we believe it’s any better than what we’ve had in the past?
In the short-term, it will mean an interim coach, since it’s hard to find a permanent coach on short notice in the best of times, and in April in particular, when leagues around the world are in full swing. My sources indicate that the two most likely options are Alex Covelo (current Quakes II head coach and the club’s director of methodology) and Ian Russell (former club assistant and Reno 1868 head coach). Covelo is regarded as incredibly bright and has the advantage of already being in the club, although the highest level he’s managed at is Serie C, the Italian 3rd division. I personally would prefer Russell, who is available, spent years in the organization, and had a simply excellent track record in Reno, all of which I would imagine would make him more able to command the respect of the first team players.
Regardless, both coaches would be more than capable of immediately fixing the defensive humiliation by reverting to fundamentally sound tactics, could tap into their deep experience with youth development to improve the younger players, and would do away with the constant drama of the Almeyda era.
In terms of a permanent manager, of course, the ideal is that the interim is so successful that he wins the job. But if he doesn’t, I know the club likes Luchi Gonzalez, who had a sparkling track record as head of FC Dallas’s academy before a mixed tenure running their first team. He recently took a job with the USMNT and therefore might be hesitant to leave it with the World Cup coming up, but he would presumably be more available afterward. I quite like the angle, too, since a focus on youth development would seem to align nicely with the next chapter of the Quakes that Chris Leitch is trying to build, and I think the work he did with Dallas’s first team doesn’t actually make me question his abilities. He’s still just 41, and he actually played for the Quakes back in the day (briefly)!
Then again, world football is a huge universe. I’d never heard of Hernán Losada when DC United appointed him, but now he’s one of my favorite young managers. If Leitch gives himself until the next offseason to scour the globe for the next manager, I’m sure he’ll be able to find someone at least worthy of the shot.
And certainly, one who wants to be here more. The ball’s in your court, John Fisher…
Thank you Colin and the rest of QE for remaining honest with the fan base. These are tough times your crew has made a bit more bearable