Last season, the San Jose Earthquakes kept only two clean sheets in thirty-four regular season games. This year, they have already notched three shutouts after a solid 1-0 victory over FC Cincinnati on Saturday night.
Despite Cristian Espinoza’s second-half red card, the Quakes held on to a narrow victory with a strong defensive performance.
“[This result] means a lot to us,” said center-back Florian Jungwirth. “It showed that this team has a lot of heart, a lot of passion and character. These are the victories that could be crucial in the end.”
San Jose are now unbeaten in four matches, their longest league run without a loss since August 2016. After a miserable 0-4-0 start to the season, coach Matias Almeyda is finally reaping the rewards of his unique man-marking system.
Their buildup was particularly strong, with crisp passes projecting an air of confidence and assuredness. Although the Quakes struggled to work through Cincinnati’s compact defensive setup, they found success in the wide areas of the pitch and took an early lead courtesy of full-back Nick Lima.
The defender rifled a twenty-yard effort into the side netting from a short corner — which wasn’t the set play Almeyda had coached in training, but a brilliant improvisation.
“[I saw] a lot of guys were marked at the back post and an open lane to shoot,” said Lima. “We do that practice every day, shooting from outside of the box.”
The Quakes almost doubled their lead just moments later as Lima cut the ball back to Shea Salinas, but the winger couldn’t wrap his foot around the ball from ten yards out.
Cincinnati were physically aggressive, drawing the Quakes into tough challenges in the first half. San Jose earned three first-half yellow cards, which came back to bite them in the second half when Espinoza was sent off for bringing down Mathieu Deplange just outside the box.
Espinoza’s red card presented San Jose with a new challenge: how to play a man-marking system with ten men. For all of Almeyda’s meticulously planned training sessions, he had never prepared his team for this situation and so the Quakes were forced to adapt on the fly.
Almeyda pushed midfielder Magnus Eriksson out wide and dropped forward Danny Hoesen into the midfield, a more compact shape. San Jose worked relentlessly to prevent Cincinnati from playing through the middle, but the visitors were still dangerous in the air.
“At points it was really tough, especially in the end when they came with their giants,” said Jungwirth. “I felt like a little dwarf.”
However, goalkeeper Daniel Vega secured the three points with an incredible stop from Fatai Alashe’s late header, contorting his body in mid-air to tip the ball over the net.
Although the performance wasn’t pretty, it showed that the team can adopt a gritty, defensive mentality under pressure — a skill that gets teams to the playoffs.
“Everybody sees San Jose differently now. Now we are tough for the opponents. If we keep playing like this, nobody wants to play against us.”
