They say you make your own luck. The San Jose Earthquakes went about proving that adage to be true – both to their benefit and against it – Friday night at Rio Tinto Stadium.
Chris Wondolowski grabbed an opportunistic first-half goal to put the Quakes in front, but an attempted clearance went horribly awry in the second half to give Real Salt Lake their first goal in nearly 400 minutes of action as the sides tied, 1-1.
It was the first time in 2015 that San Jose failed to close out a game after taking a lead, and the timing magnified the failure, since it opened a stretch of three road games in eight days for the Quakes.
“No, not losing a lead,” Wondolowski said on the postgame broadcast when asked if this was the result he had wanted. “Anytime you have a lead, especially on the road, you’ve got to be smart and you’ve got to keep it. To get a point on the road, we’ll take it, but we don’t like losing leads.”
Wondolowski took advantage when Shea Salinas’ shot pinged off RSL defender Jamison Olave and came free inside the home side’s penalty area. Kyle Beckerman appeared to possibly play the ball off Olave’s deflection, and Wondolowski leapt at the chance, delivering a thumping left-footed strike from 13 yards to beat fellow US national team World Cup veteran Nick Rimando.
Assistant referee Anthony Vasoli kept his flag down, and Wondolowski had his team-leading fourth goal of the season.
“From what I saw, it looked like he was offside,” Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear said. “I know there’s these new offside rules that are confusing to a lot of people. We were the [beneficiaries] of that rule tonight. From what I saw up on the scoreboard, I thought he was in front of everybody. That’s what I saw.”
But San Jose ultimately couldn’t hang on, eventually bowing under the pressure of RSL’s dominance in possession (61.9 percent to the Quakes’ 38.1) in painful fashion.
Just seconds after Rimando turned away Adam Jahn’s drive at the top of RSL’s box – a play set in motion by Wondolowski’s pressure on Olave – the hosts countered. A flick header from Devon Sandoval drew San Jose goalkeeper David Bingham off his line, but with RSL forward Alvaro Saborio lurking, Quakes center back Victor Bernardez tried to launch the ball out of danger – only to deliver a mishit kick that wound up being a perfect chip over Bingham and into the back of the net.
“We were getting a little bit leggy there at the end, but I thought we won the ball in some good areas, and with a little bit more sharpness, maybe we’re looking at 2-0 instead of 1-1,” Kinnear said. “[The own goal] is something that’s definitely correctable. If we were to do it again two minutes later, it would be a different outcome. But that’s just the way the ball bounced. It bounced wrong for us in that situation.”
