The San Jose Earthquakes conceded four goals in their first 10 matches of the season. They’ve conceded another 4 in the past two games: a 3-2 win at St. Louis City and a 4-2 win hosting Minnesota United in the Open Cup.
While this is sniffing at the caviar – the Quakes are on a franchise-best winning streak and a deep Open Cup run – it’s starting to look a bit wobbly for a team that’s hurting for depth. The back line is a little bit less organized, Ronaldo Vieira is a step slower to sniff out attacks, and the wingers aren’t quite as sharp in preventing overloads. Everything has led to wins so far, but it’s been less mechanical separation of the opponent and more digging deep and surviving.
To be clear: the Earthquakes of years past never even did the latter on a consistent basis. The attack is losing steam as well. In his weekly recap article last week, Matt Doyle pointed out three of the strengths of the San Jose attack:
- They avoid the central channel in the final third, instead operating either in the right half-space (39.1% of their touches, which is 11th in the league, happen there) or the left half-space (39.8% of their touches, which is 1st in the league, happen there).
- Keeping their touches in the half-spaces means it’s easier to create overloads with the near-side winger & overlapping fullback.
- It’s also easier to counterpress if you lose possession in the half-space, provided you get immediate pressure to the ball and prevent a long switch (San Jose’s excellent at this right now; we’ll see if that holds through the heat of the summer). (Author’s note: this is literally Beau Leroux’s two goals this season.)
While they are still doing this side-to-side overload, it has resulted in fewer low driven crosses across the six yard box and more cutbacks to the top of the box. These are lower-percentage goals (no matter what Leroux’s left foot says) and more likely to result in counterattacks (no matter what either of Leroux’s feet say). It’s slightly higher risk, and it will be interesting to see how San Jose shifts as a team when playing the upper echelon of the West in May sandwiched between a brutal cross-country flight to Toronto this weekend and a trip to the accursed Providence Park before the World Cup Break.
But First, the Whitecaps
The big story in the league right now is that the Vancouver Whitecaps are up for relocation – potentially to Las Vegas. Again, Doyle has written about this, as has St. Pauli Peace Prize winner Wes Burdine. It’s fair to say there is a sense of betrayal in the air: the Whitecaps are one of the best teams in the league, have brought in one of the best players in Thomas Muller, and have sold perhaps the best MLS prospect in Alphonso Davies. They’re getting monster crowds. What else do you want from them?
I don’t have a word of dispute with Doyle or Burdine, and I should add that I started following the Quakes (and MLS writ large) well after the Clash/Quakes decamped to Houston about 25 years ago. But I think it is worth providing a bit of global context.
Soccer, worldwide, is in a very shaky bubble. The recurring theme around the Whitecaps has been “MLS is looking for a new owner, and everyone who has taken a look at the finances has had their hair turn grey.”
This is beyond a Vancouver issue or an MLS issue. Something I’ve found indicative over the years is looking where players are coming to MLS from: I’m not talking about your Timo Werners or Son Heung-Mins, but the mid-level international players. There has always been churn from South America, but lately a wide swathe have come from Ligue 1 (France) and a disproportionate number from Ligat HaAl (Israel). These are two leagues that are, bluntly, collapsing.
France, from Hannah Weber’s Tribuna blog:
For mid‑table sides, TV money represented more than a third of total income. When that revenue fell by about 40% overnight, wage‑to‑turnover ratios exploded beyond sustainable levels. Clubs that had signed players on long contracts — spreading transfer fees over several years through amortisation — suddenly could not meet annual installments or wage commitments.
Israel, from the country’s Ministry of Sport:
17/28 teams in the Premier League and National League… may not have enough current assets to meet their short-term liabilities.
Players that would have developed or led local teams are instead sold for relatively paltry sums to MLS. Not because of huge transfer fees, none of these dudes are Thiago Almada, but because the teams need every cent they can find.
The value of MLS has always been that there is a latent market for soccer in a way that’s just not true in France, Israel, or most countries on Earth. That value has led to an argument that the sport has further to grow.
But what if that’s not the case? What if MLS is just the one of the top handful of leagues in the world, the USMNT is a CONCACAF giant that can maybe get into the round of 8, and there are 30 teams who can get ~12,000 to 18,000 folks to show up for a match? There’s no skyrocketing growth in that, but there is sustainability.
There are not a lot of people in the team-buying market interested in sustainability.
Burdine notes this in his Whitecaps piece:
It turns out, driving the value up for all the teams is only good if people want to pay that price. The pool of people who can pay that price has become so small that you can’t find people who want to keep it in Vancouver.
If MLS is a mature market, then its valuations are distorted. But if soccer is a mature market, than the valuations are all out of wack. It means that these multi-team ownerships, loan armies, and other distasteful aspects of the modern game are less about growing value and more about moving money around. In short: a Ponzi scheme.
It’s a bit scary to think about, at least for me, because I’m pretty happy where MLS is. I guess it would be more fun to have a bit more parity between MLS and LigaMX top-to-bottom and to have a hemisphere version of the Copa Libertadores…but at the same time, I’m happy with my $99 annual pass to watch whatever’s on. MLS is one of the best leagues in the world, but I’d rather that be the case because it’s growing and not because there are teams collapsing left and right in Europe. What’s happening in Vancouver is par for the course for classic teams like Girondins de Bordeaux in France or Vitesse in the Netherlands. As far as global soccer goes, I’m not sure if it’s a race to the top or bottom.
