We at Pucked in the Head are fortunate enough to run into thoughtful, passionate sports fans the world over. Case in point: the always-entertaining fanatical hockey/soccer/football border-crosser, Richard Davalos. He maintains a bizarre Tumblr feed, equal parts random gifs, assorted pop culture surfage and kickass Wolverine sideburns.
Richard’s @QuakesFan84 Twitter feed has purposes twofold: 1) plying the Twitterverse with as many clever hockey tweets as any one man has a right to disseminate, and 2) suggesting that there are nearly 100 San Jose Earthquakes fans on this planet. It is in this latter function that he offers his preview of this weekend’s clash between the Vancouver Whitecaps FC and those same woeful Quakes.
Time for four straight
by Richard Davalos
As noted in Jason’s last Whitecaps entry, Vancouver has never earned 12 points in four games in their MLS history. In fact, they haven’t strung together four consecutive wins as a franchise at any level since May of the 2008 USL-1 season. Along comes San Jose, fresh off their first win in more than two months — a midweek friendly against Honduran first division side CDS Vida.
The Earthquakes have not had a win in league play since a 1-0 home win over the Seattle Sounders way back on August 2nd. They haven’t even had a lead since they went up 3-2 in the 84th minute against Portland Timbers on September 7th; that lead held up for all of one minute, as Portland immediately countered to earn the draw.
San Jose are so anxious to move on with their existence that after the friendly win, they canned coach Mark Watson and his assistant, the British Columbia-born Nick Dasovic. It is now Vancouver’s turn to play Homer Simpson to San Jose’s Krusty Burglar in the farewell to San Jose’s quaint “temporary” seven-year home ground that was Buck Shaw Stadium. To a layman, the elusive fourth consecutive win for Vancouver is just a matter of playing the game.
In the last match between Vancouver and San Jose, your Whitecaps had not scored in the previous four games, and had been shut out in five of their last six. It took all of 39 minutes before Vancouver got on the board with a Morales PK to kill that streak. The Whitecaps went so far as to score a second goal, this one in the 56th minute for a 2-0 final.
Since then, Vancouver has scored in four of five games to put themselves provisionally in the play-in game. Presuming a Real Salt Lake win on the road in Portland on Friday night, Vancouver would clinch a playoff spot with a win Saturday night over the Earthquakes. The only wild card Saturday is going to be how San Jose responds to the dismissal of the uncreative Watson. If interim manager Ian Russell can formulate a game plan less predictable than backpass-backpass-longball-pray and integrate some possession, San Jose might stand a chance of holding an opponent to fewer than 15 shots for the second time since August 30.
Vancouver is in control of their own destiny, and would clinch a playoff spot by winning out their remaining two games against San Jose and Colorado. Should the Whitecaps finish the season with that five-game win streak, they stand a chance of hosting — provided of course that FC Dallas loses out in Commerce City and home to Portland. Don’t start planning the parade just yet, because if VWFC fail this weekend they could give up the five seed and play the role of Hans Moleman in “Man Getting Hit by Football”.
Give Buck Shaw the finale it deserves: Good Riddance.