The San Jose Earthquakes are known for their stoppage-time winners and other late heroics. Tonight, however, they only needed seventy-three seconds to make their mark. Matias Almeyda’s red-hot team scored the quickest goal in Avaya Stadium history and didn’t look back, cruising to a 3-1 victory over the Colorado Rapids.
“We talked about that before the game, how we had to be awake from the first minute,” said Quakes defender Tommy Thompson. “I think that translated on the field, guys were pushing the envelope.”
The win propels the Quakes to fourth place in the Western Conference, only a single point off second place. That margin won’t hold for long at their current pace, for the Quakes are the hottest team in Major League Soccer: unstoppable on offense, solid on defense, and easy on the eyes.
All of which is exactly how Almeyda wants his team to be playing. Speaking after the match, the Argentine coach told reporters: “Today you saw a team that enjoys playing football. Today you saw that the fans enjoyed watching us play football. This is the spectacle we wanted.”
Before the 17,762 fans in San Jose could even get comfortable, the Quakes had them out of their seats. The home side had conceded early goals in three of their last four games, but they were doing the scoring on this occasion. Cristian Espinoza overlapped Thompson on the right, then whipped a dangerous low ball across the face of the goal. At the far post, Colorado defender Lalas Abubakar accidentally misdirected the ball into the back of his own net in a miscalculated attempt to deny Chris Wondolowski what was about to be an easy tap-in.
Wondolowski would get more chances, though. The forward fired over from the edge of the area in the thirteenth minute, then fluffed a golden opportunity from Espinoza’s cut-back shortly thereafter.
While his finishing has been subpar in the last month-and-a-half, Wondolowski has maintained his starting position for his ability to lead the front line. One of the players with whom he has developed a strong chemistry is Vako, and the Georgian more than atoned for his captain’s misses with a goal in the thirty-third minute. Vako turned his defender inside-out with a few quick shakes of his hips and curled a gorgeous low finish into the bottom corner, a strike every bit as beautiful as San Jose’s first goal was scrappy.
Colorado weren’t without their chances; they just didn’t take them. Quakes goalkeeper Daniel Vega had something to do with that, denying Diego Rubio from close range toward the end of the second half and saving Andre Shinyashiki’s low effort on the other side of the break.
Yet there was really never any doubt who would win on the night. The Quakes comfortably controlled the ball in the second period and continued to patiently probe Colorado’s back-line. Espinoza rattled the woodwork with a wicked long-distance effort in the eighty-first minute, and substitute Shea Salinas found the back of the net from a long, winding run from down the left sixty seconds later.
Colorado scored a scrappy late goal, but there was no stopping this San Jose Earthquakes team.