After 15 minutes of tactical soccer during which traffic in the midfield aborted every tentative from both teams to put the ball on the ground and keep possession, the San Jose Earthquakes found the solution and, again, it came from one of its two wingers, Darren Huckerby.
Ronnie O'Brien, on the right wing, had been the most active Quake in the first minutes, but it is Darren Huckerby who, in the 18th minute, stole a ball to a defender 30 yards from the goal and crossed it perfectly to Arturo Alvarez at the penalty spot who controlled with his right foot and took a shot with his left foot toward the net, out of reach of DC's goalkeeper, Louis Crayton (1-0, 18th)
After the goal, DC seemed to have lost their unity. Ivan Guerrero and Marcelo Gallardo were creating a lot of movements on the left side of DC's offense but they always lacked precision in the final pass. More importantly, the rest of the team couldn't follow them which left a lot of empty space in the midfield for San Jose. With many players injured, DC's defense wasn't reassuring. Darren Huckerby missed a couple of good chances and the visitors were lucky to reach half time only one goal down. The Earthquakes continued to dominate the game after the break and, eventually, scored a second goal when Eric Denton threw a long ball to the left along the line to Scott Sealy. Sealy protected the ball and waited for Huckerby to run in the center of the box. He crossed the ball back in his run and Huckerby didn't miss this time (2-0, 62nd)
The Earthquakes were controlling the game without real difficulties so far (only 2 saves to make for Cannon in the whole game) but the last 25 minutes were not going to be so easy for San Jose. After the usual substitutions around the 60th minute, the game became very open with both teams taking advantage of the open spaces to create chances.
DC United missed their chances and things started to look good for the local team, until Jason Hernandez, perfect until then, decided to make the end of the game more interesting. Under the pressure of Rod Dyachenko, instead of finding an easy pass, he tried to dribble and lost the control of the ball. Dyachenko passed it to Santino Quaranta in the box who beat Joe Cannon to reduce the gap (2-1, 76th) With fifteen minutes to go, the visitors, for the first time tonight, finally showed enthusiasm and put the pressure on the Earthquakes who had to fight until the fourth minute of stoppage time to save their one-goal lead and take the three points.
With this result, the San Jose Earthquakes extend their unbeaten streak to 8 games and, more importantly, will receive the Houston Dynamo next week (Saturday Sept. 13 at 7pm) in the fourth position in the Western Conference and full of confidence.
Thierry Heumann (email) | ||||||||
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