San Jose Earthquakes Archive

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Wondolowski named Player of the Week: Too early to talk about Lassiter’s record?

By
Steven Sandor
– 05/07/2012

Chris Wondolowski: 10 games, 11 goals

After scoring three goals over the course of two games, Chris Wondolowski was named the MLS Player of the Week.

Wondolowski took over the MLS scoring lead this week, and now has 11 on the season. The reigning MLS Player of the Month easily took the vote from the membership of the North American Soccer Reporters.

“Wondo” scored twice in a midweek match that saw the San Jose Earthquakes down D.C. United by a 5-3 count. And, even though Whitecaps’ striker Eric Hassli stole the show with an injury-time winner, Wondolowski headed in the opening goal in Vancouver on Saturday. The Quakes lost that match to the Whitecaps 2-1.

The Whitecaps have only given up seven goals all season long. Wondolowski has three of them.
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Win over Earthquakes shows off the Whitecaps’ depth

By
Martin MacMahon
– 05/06/2012

Eric Hassli

Big Eric is back.

He left it late, but Eric Hassli’s 94th minute stoppage-time winner gave the Vancouver Whitecaps a 2-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes Saturday night at BC Place, sending the 19,271 fans home happy.

First-half goals from Chris Wondolowski and Gershon Koffie appeared to set the match up for a draw before the substitute had other ideas, getting on the end of a pass from Davide Chiumiento before beating goalkeeper Jon Busch with a low shot into the right corner.

The goal breaks the Frenchman’s 17-game Major League Soccer goalless streak, and gives the previously hapless striker two goals in two games in all competitions following his match-winner against FC Edmonton in the Canadian Championship semifinal, first leg on Wednesday.

“It’s like almost six months I didn’t score [in MLS],” Hassli told The 11 following the match. “So, I’m happy tonight, but the most important [thing] is that we won 2-1 and we continue our way.”
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Wondolowski wins Player of the Month honour

By
Steven Sandor
– 05/02/2012

Chris Wondolowski

Chris Wondolowski was the first man in MLS to score on the Vancouver Whitecaps this season — and it’s one of the reasons he was selected the league’s Player of the Month for April.

Earlier this month, Wondolowski ended the Whitecaps’ record shutout streak at the start of a season at 428 minutes, then added another goal as the Quakes beat Vancouver 3-1. The teams meet again this Saturday, and Whitecaps coach Martin Rennie will rest many regulars — including Jay DeMerit, Lee Young-Pyo and Jun Marques Davidson — for Wednesday’s Amway Canadian Championship match against FC Edmonton so he can have a fresh squad to face Wondolowski and the first-in-the-west Quakes.

Wondolowski won the vote (Lee was also nominated) from the membership of the North American Soccer Reporters.

On top of the two-goal performance against the Whitecaps earlier this month, Wondo scored in a draw with New York and had another goal in a win over Real Salt Lake.
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Lenhart edges out Maicon Santos for POTW award

By
Steven Sandor
– 04/30/2012

Steven Lenhart

It’s not unprecedented, but it is rare when a Player of the Week winner gets the nod for less than a half’s worth of work.

But that’s the case this week, as San Jose Earthquake Steven Lenhart edged out D.C. United’s Maicon Santos for the Player of the Week Award. How close was it? Lenhart got just two more first-place votes from the members of the North American Soccer reporters than Maicon Santos.

Lenhart came in with 30 minutes left in the match, with San Jose tied 0-0 with Philadelphia. Lenhart scored the opener and, then, in injury time, scored the dramatic winner as San Jose kept atop the Western Conference with a 2-1 win.
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Bad news for TFC, Impact: East is proving to be much better than advertised

By
Steven Sandor
– 04/23/2012

There are those who look at Toronto FC’s 0-6 start to the regular season and think “oh boy, I am glad we don’t play in the Western Conference, or the season would already be over.”

The thinking is that, with the West being so much stronger than the East — with the likes of Real Salt Lake, the Seattle Sounders, a Los Angeles Galaxy side that’s got to get better and surprising San Jose — that it would be easier for TFC or Montreal to recover from poor starts to the season and pip am Eastern playoff spot than it would be for a much-improved Vancouver side to hang with the Western juggernauts.

And, through the first two weeks of the season, that thinking would have been right on. In head-to-head matches between teams from the East and West, the Western Conference teams won 10 of the first 12. It was proof that all of MLS’ power lay west of Houston. It was an apples-to-apples comparison and the Western teams were kicking butt.

But since then, from Week Three onward, we’ve seen the Eastern teams start to surge back. And it’s not just Sporting Kansas City, who are off to a 7-1-0 start and most Montreal and Toronto fans would admit already can’t be caught.
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Henry makes MLS history with third POTW award in a row

By
Steven Sandor
– 04/09/2012

Thierry Henry

Thierry Henry has done something that no other player in MLS history has accomplished.

The star striker of the New York Red Bulls has been named the MLS Player of the Week for the third consecutive time. Never before has anyone been named POTW three times. But, in a league where many of the Designated Players have disappointed, Henry has staked his claim as the league’s most exciting, electric figure — and Commissioner Don Garber should be writing Arsenal’s all-time leading scorer a thank-you note.

Henry got the most votes from the North American Soccer Reporters.

He’s also the reigning Player of the Month.

He has seven goals in five matches. Is it too early to start the Roy Lassiter goal watch? Lassiter holds the MLS record with 27 goals in a season, done in an era of mini-games and shootouts.
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After loss in San Jose, Whitecaps continue to be a difficult team to read

By
Steven Sandor
– 04/08/2012

Chris Wondolowski

All season long, the Vancouver Whitecaps performances can be described as “glass half-full, half-empty.”

Yes, the Whitecaps didn’t surrender a goal and were undefeated through their first four games. But their offence has been stagnant — and the team has played what has to be considered the easiest schedule in MLS out of any of the 19 clubs. And points dropped to Eastern clubs like D.C. United and Philadelphia could come back to haunt the Caps at the end of the season.

Just like the rest of the season, Saturday’s match could be talked about in that “glass half-full, half-empty vein.” The Whitecaps, kept the San Jose Earthquakes scoreline at zero for 68 minutes, and set a new MLS record for longest shutout streak from the beginning of a season at 428 minutes. Then the Caps imploded, giving up three second-half goals to the Quakes thanks to a series of mistakes in the back that’d have you thinking you were watching the 2011 edition of the team.

The Earthquakes beat the Whitecaps 3-1, and Vancouver is now 2-1-2 (or 2-2-1 if you prefer the European way of doing the tables),

But, like the previous wins and ties, this doesn’t offer much of a clue to what kind of team coach Martin Rennie has assembled in Vancouver. Read the rest of this entry »

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Thierry Henry named MLS Player of the Week

By
Steven Sandor
– 03/26/2012

Through the first two weeks of the season, the MLS players of the week weren’t exactly household names — Portland’s Kalif Alhassan and Seattle’s David Estrada.

Well, no such worries with the current edition of the Player of the Week. New York Red Bull Thierry Henry, the brightest soccer star in the biggest media market in MLS, got the POTW nod after the votes from the North American Soccer Reporters were counted.

Henry and teammate Kenny Cooper each scored twice Sunday as the Red Bulls trounced the Colorado Rapids 4-1. But Henry gets the nod as, not only did he score twice, but he was the provider of Cooper’s first goal with a wonderful through ball that pierced the Rapids’ defence.
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Terrible TFC defending to blame for three-goal loss in home opener

By
Mark Polishuk
– 03/24/2012

Chris Wondolowski: Scored twice

If there was any question of Torsten Frings’ value to Toronto FC, his absence for most of the last two matches has proven just how badly the Reds need their captain.

TFC dropped a 3-0 result to the San Jose Earthquakes in front of 20,753 disappointed fans at BMO Field on Saturday in the club’s home opener.  It was Toronto’s first full game without Frings, who suffered a hamstring injury early in last week’s 3-1 loss in Seattle and will be out of action until late April at the earliest.  Without Frings holding the fort at defensive midfield and providing cover on the back line, the holes in TFC’s defence were been badly exposed for the second time in as many weeks.

“We’ve had a big loss of Torsten not there to organize the team on the pitch,” said TFC head coach Aron Winter.  “At the moment he’s not available to play [so] we have to fix the back line….We have to resolve those problems.”
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The 11′s super-duper MLS 2012 season preview

By
Steven Sandor
– 03/07/2012

The 11’s Steven Sandor, Mark Polishuk and Aman Dhanoa held a virtual round table, discussing how they foresaw the 2012 MLS season.

Will the Galaxy repeat? Will any of the three Canadian teams make the playoffs? Who will be the MVP?

We tallied up our votes, and came up with our list of how the teams will finish, who will win MLS Cup and who will be the league’s MVP. No need to play the season, now. We have it all figured out.
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