The San Jose Earthquakes played with verve and quality, peppering New York Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles with shots from a variety of angles.
Unfortunately for the Quakes, that description only applies to a half-hour segment of their 2-0 loss to the Red Bulls on Friday night. And the other hour was pretty ugly for San Jose, who got run over by Jesse Marsch’s unbeaten, high-tempo crew.
“We started off the game poorly, got punished for giving the ball away in good areas for them, bad areas for us,” Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear said following the game. “And then we came out with a better attitude in the second half. We just couldn’t score a goal.”
The insertion of Chris Wondolowski for JJ Koval in the 56th minute, followed by Tommy Thompson’s emergence on the right wing in place of Sanna Nyassi 12 minutes later, kickstarted the San Jose attack -- although the fact that New York didn’t need to push the issue behind late first-half goals from Sacha Kljestan and Mike Grella also likely had something to do with it.
“[Kinnear] just wanted me to pinch in and make things happen,” said Thompson, who made his second appearance of the season. “He said, ‘You’ve been training well, just go out there and do your stuff.’ I thought we did a decent job connecting there; some opportunities came about, but hopefully next game we’ll be putting them away.”
In the 28 minutes after Wondolowski came on, San Jose outshot New York 8-1, with two corner kicks to the Red Bulls’ one. For the remainder of the game, the Red Bulls dominated the visitors in those two categories -- 20-2 on shots, 11-3 on corners.
A goal during that stretch -- when Robles turned aside attempts by Thompson, Innocent and Wondolowski -- might have shifted the momentum. But based on the whole of the evening -- especially given that David Bingham was called upon to provide six saves of a sometimes spectacular nature -- it’s hard to argue the Quakes came away with a poor result.
“For about 30 minutes, if we get a goal there in the middle of the second half, it could be a different story,” Kinnear said. “But Robles makes some good saves for them and we missed a couple chances."
Said Bingham: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the first half wasn’t up to our standards. It’s hard to get back into the game when you come in down 2-0. . . . We had them on the ropes in the second half. They didn’t get in a good rhythm. We probably could have had one or two to get back in the game. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
