SAN JOSE, Calif. -- San Jose Earthquakes goalkeeper David Bingham considers himself a baseball fan, but he likely won’t be checking out Monument Park during the club’s first-ever trip to Yankee Stadium.
Asked Wednesday after the Quakes’ disappointing 1-1 tie against 10-man Montreal, Bingham shot down the notion that there was extra meaning to facing New York City FC on Saturday (7 pm ET, MLS LIVE) at the home of Major League Baseball’s 27-time champions.
“We need to get three points,” Bingham said. “That’s about it. It’s not ideal for a soccer stadium; I think the dimensions are a little goofy, but at the end of the day, if we get three points there, we go from what, seventh to fourth [place in the Western Conference], something like that? We don’t care if we’re playing at Yankee Stadium or wherever we’re at. We’ve got to go there with a mindset to win.”
Bingham should be a good barometer of San Jose’s confidence, given that his error was the biggest single reason why the Impact were able to snag a 65th-minute equalizer despite seeing defender Ambroise Oyongo sent off 16 minutes earlier.
Montreal midfielder Kyle Bekker took a ball from teammate Johan Venegas on the right wing, then cut inside on his left foot. Bingham thought the Canadian international would unleash a cross; instead, Bekker fired in a shot at the near post for his first career MLS goal.
“He looked like he was going to whip it in, and he got me, got me leaning,” Bingham said. “It’s not good enough. This one’s on me tonight. The guys ahead of me busted their butts the whole game, and then my mistake cost us two points tonight.
“There’s no beating around the bush here. It sucks.”
It was arguably Bingham’s toughest individual flub since ascending this season to the Quakes’ No. 1 'keeper role. Head coach Dominic Kinnear, though not diminishing Bingham’s role, apportioned blame onto more than just the 'keeper. Montreal’s goal-scoring sequence started with the Quakes’ Shaun Francis and Marc Pelosi both jumping -- and failing to deal effectively -- with a long kick from Impact goalkeeper Eric Kronberg. That same pair of players chased down Venegas near the sideline, but the Costa Rican international split the double-team and the ball rolled free to Bekker.
“It’s very frustrating, especially in the manner it happened,” Kinnear said. “It’s two guys going for a ball that we should have handled better than we did. And then the guy slyly whips in a shot instead of a cross, and David gets caught leaning. I’m sure he’ll put his hand up, like he will and already has done. But the manner in which it got there in the first place was very frustrating.”
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It was a far cry from the type of defending San Jose displayed while posting a league-best 448-minute shutout streak while winning four straight games -- all by clean sheet -- in August. The Quakes lost left back Jordan Stewart during that stretch to a season-ending Achilles tear, and have been without center back Victor Bernardez for the better part of their last three matches due to a hamstring injury.
“It’s not missing any one guy,” Bingham said. “It’s just [that] we’ve got to be tuned in the whole game. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t make excuses where you don’t have this guy in or that guy in. We’re all very capable back there. We have one of the best defenses in the league. We’ve just got to get back to what we were doing last month. We’ve got to be tuned in the whole game, and if we do that, defensively, we’re really good. Even if you look tonight – defensively, we were [performing] well. It was just my one mistake.”
