SAN JOSE, Calif. -- After putting out 90 minutes’ worth of playoff-level effort on the Avaya Stadium pitch Friday night, all the San Jose Earthquakes can do for the rest of the weekend is tune in and hope.
The Quakes did their part in their last-ditch playoff push, delivering a 1-0 victory against Sporting Kansas City to move into a tie on 47 points with Seattle and Portland, forming a cluster that spans both sides of the Western Conference’s red line.
But since the Sounders and Timbers -- and, for that matter, 48-point SKC -- have a game in hand on the Quakes, San Jose players and coaches will suddenly find themselves in the same, unfamiliar boat as their fans: Reduced to being television spectators, supporting teams that ordinarily are their rivals.
“I will be rooting for the LA Galaxy [on Sunday, against Portland],” Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear told reporters. “And Houston [who play Seattle], too. You always want to try to take care of your situation. We don’t control everything and we have to kind of wait and see what happens.”
A loss for Portland in either of their last two matches would put San Jose back in control of their own destiny. The Quakes need Seattle to drop points from both of their remaining games to have any chance of catching the Sounders.
For Trinidadian international Cordell Cato, who stepped in at right back as Marvell Wynne slid over to replace suspended center back Victor Bernardez, it might prove more difficult to watch Sunday’s critical matches than it did protecting a one-goal lead for almost a full half Friday night.
“It’s more nerve-wracking, watching the games, because you want a certain result, and every time it doesn’t go that way, or a chance happens, you kind of jump,” Cato said.
San Jose’s first half against SKC was something like that for the 18,000 in attendance. The Quakes generated all but one of the stanza’s real scoring chances, but shots kept homing in on Sporting goalkeeper Tim Melia, rather than finding their way around him.
“The message was, ‘We’ve done everything except score a goal. So let’s not be satisfied with that effort,’” Kinnear said of his halftime talk.
Anibal Godoy made sure that came true, cashing home a short-range sitter set up by the combined efforts of Shea Salinas and Chris Wondolowski barely two minutes into the second half.
“We had to win the game,” Godoy said through a team translator. “It was a must-win game. The whole team ran for 90 minutes, and put in a great effort. I thought the entire game, when we needed to find space, we found space. When we needed to defend, we defended.”
The Quakes’ chances of hosting a playoff game this season are slim, but Friday offered a little preview of what such a match might look like. With SKC still chasing a chance to finish among the Western Conference’s top two and avoid a play-in match, the visitors gave no quarter.
“Obviously, there was a lot of fight, a lot of grit, a lot of passion between both sides to try to get a result,” Wynne said. “If any [playoff] game is easier than that, I’ll be surprised.”
Said Kinnear: “Everyone’s fighting for everything. They’re playing for something, too. . . . I enjoy playing against Peter [Vermes’] teams, because they don’t stop. They test you physically. They test you mentally. And you have to be on the top of your game. For us to come away with this win tonight just showed a great mental attitude by us. I thought, for 90 minutes, we were sharp.”
San Jose looked more committed offensively than they had in weeks, and were able to withstand all of SKC’s pressure, even after red-hot striker Krisztian Nemeth came on in the 59th minute.
“It feels good to beat a team where everyone seemed to have their own battles going on,” Wynne said. “It’s kind of like a getting-the-last-laugh sort of thing, I suppose.”
That didn’t mean there weren’t moments of high anxiety for the hosts, such as when Mikey Lopez snuck behind Cato in the 71st minute but botched his open 6-yard header from Benny Feilhaber’s looping pass.
Dom, were you holding your breath?
“I was,” said Kinnear, who chuckled. “It’s been a lot of that this year.”
What’s one Sunday more?
