Florian Jungwirth doesn’t bite his tongue. The defensive midfielder was fuming after San Jose’s abject defeat to the Portland Timbers on Saturday night and let it be known. “The way we played, it has nothing to do with man soccer, it’s youth soccer,” he told reporters. “The first half was good but I didn’t feel like we were going to win in the second half… we lost a lot of balls, a lot of transitions. Fortunately, Portland didn’t play well, otherwise, we could have been in more trouble.”
Jungwirth lamented San Jose’s lack of bite, saying: “You have to be smart, you have to be an asshole on the field, you have to play dirty. We are not doing that, we invite the guys: ‘Hey, come here, play a little soccer.’ That’s not enough to compete. Like I said, if we play like this it’s going to be hard.”
Although the Quakes stayed close in a cagey battle, they failed to convert their chances and Diego Valeri’s late winner dropped the home side to the bottom of the MLS table. Coach Mikael Stahre bemoaned the lack of cutting edge as his side were shut out for the first time this season. “Today we lacked that last quality in the box,” he said. “We created some opportunities but not big chances.”
The Timbers set up compact in the middle, blunting San Jose’s offensive creativity. In the second half, Stahre experimented with DP forward Vako in a central role, but the home side lacked intensity going forward.
Stahre was generally pleased with the structure of his team, but the Quakes clearly need to put more forward after a series of narrow defeats. “The commitment in the group is good and we’ve had better and better structure in our buildup,” the Swede said. “I think we’ve defended better step by step but, obviously, we’re not good enough to win games so far. It’s a really fine line between winning and losing so the only thing we can do is add a little bit more.”
“[We need to] do it again with a little bit better performance, 10% more.”
Defender Shea Salinas echoed his coach’s sentiments. “It’s frustrating,” he said. “The second half they had hardly any chances. A free kick at the top of the box and we know [Diego] Valeri’s good at those. You just hope he mishits it, and he didn’t. It’s frustrating that we were scoreless tonight, but we did have a lot of positive things. We kept the ball really well tonight. We built up out of the back very well. We just weren’t able to finish our chances tonight, which we’ve been able to do most of the season. That happens sometimes.”
For some, like Jungwirth, that frustration is turning to anger as the losses compile.
