Ryan Cochrane Post Game Interview

Embele Awipi talks to San Jose Earthquakes defensive stalwart and Santa Clara University alum Ryan Cochrane.

Earthquakes vs Dynamo

The Earthquakes defeated the Dynamo 2-1 and your Center Line Soccer photographers were on hand for the win. Read more

New Quakes earn their stripes in 2-1 win

San Jose Earthquakes’ Kei Kamara celebrates his goal against the Houston Dynamo with teammate Ryan Johnson, right, at Buck Shaw Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., Thursday, May 22, 2008. The Earthquakes won 2-1. Photo by John Todd/centerlinesoccer.com/isiphotos.com

SANTA CLARA - In a battle of past and present Earthquake teams on Thursday, the 2008 edition showed they deserve the mantle of San Jose’s team.

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Kirovski, Gray on bench for tonight’s game

Talk about throwing guys into the fire. I’ve been told that both Jovan Kirovski and Kelly Gray will be available as substitutues for tonight’s game. While that might seem to be rushing things a little bit, the fact that both Peguero Jean Philippe and Gavin Glinton are injured means that what little depth the Quake had up top is nearly gone. With Kei Kamara leaving for international duty next week, it might be worth seeing what the one-time “Savior of American Soccer” has to offer.

Other tidbits:

– Ivan Guerrero will miss the next three weeks on international duty with Honduras. The Catrachos have a friendly next Wednesday against Venezuela followed by a World Cup qualifier on June 4 against Puerto Rico, another friendly against Haiti on June 7, and the second leg against Puerto Rico on June 14. For that reason, my original prediction that Ramiro Corrales will move to left back will have to wait a while. If he goes anywhere, it will probably be left midfield.

– There is growing concern that newly acquired Peguero Jean Philippe may never return to a level that will make him a steady contributor in San Jose. As of Tuesday, Jean Philippe was still being limited to off-field workouts. Following Thursday’s game against Houston, the Quakes are off until they play Real Salt Lake on May 31. If Jean Philippe is not back in full training by then, I’d say “growing concern” will have morphed into “near certainty.”

– Spoke briefly with Jay Ayres at Tuesday’s practice, and he’s healing pretty well from the broken cheekbone he suffered in the Open Cup game against Real Salt Lake. Ayres has begun physical activity on a stationary bike and reported no headaches or other post-concussion-like symptoms. The 6-8 week timetable looks realistic. He also said that he can’t wait to back on the field, a remarkable attitude to have after everything he has been through.

Quakes adquiere Gray y Kirovski por Burpo

Kelly Gray regresa a la acción para los Quakes. Foto por Michael Pimentel/isiphotos.com

San Jose Earthquakes anunció el día de hoy las contrataciones del defensa/medio Kelly Gray y el medio-campista Jovan Kirovski del Colorado Rapidis, intercambio con el arquero Preston Burpo, fuentes conocidas de este convenio le comentó a CLS. Read more

Manchester United FC venció en penales a Chelsea FC 6-5 (Global 7-6)

Manchester United FC se convirtió por tercera ocasión en el Campeón absoluto de la Champions League UEFA 2008 al vencer desde los 12 pasos a su similar El Chelsea FC que buscaba su primer titulo por 6-5. Estos dos rivales puramente ingleses terminaron jugando mas de 120 minutos intensos de juego y al escuchar él ultimo silbatazo del arbitro central Lubos Michael de Eslovaquia el partido que concluyo empatado a un gol por bando, siendo esta la primera definición británica en la historia de este campeonato. Read more

Deja vu all over again

Look at some of the headlines from today’s pre-game stories and you’ll see the word “reunion” a lot. A reunion of boyhood chums like John Doyle and Dominic Kinnear, a reunion of former teammates like Ryan Cochrane and Kelly Gray with, well, Ryan Cochrane and Kelly Gray. Maybe it’s just us, but we look forward to the day when a visit from the Houston Dynamo is just another match for the Quakes, instead of an all-too-real reminder of the day in December, 2005, when AEG finally followed through on their threat to move the team to Houston.

To fans, the Dynamo is a reminder of their greatest success and their greatest failure. Two MLS Cups, a Supporters’ Shield, and a forced march to the meteorological hell that is southeastern Texas. San Jose fans know all the reasons and some will even admit that the move was justified on business terms, but it was a wrenching experience nonetheless. The fact that Houston still plays in a stadium where the team plays second fiddle to college football, after all of AEG’s complaints about how playing in Spartan Stadium put them in a terrible financial bind, may satisfy one’s sense of irony, but it is a bitter victory at best. While it may not make sense to the Dynamo players who formerly wore Earthquakes blue with such pride, in many ways it is an insult to Earthquakes fans that their team even exists, even if the players are blameless in the matter.

We hope that doesn’t sound too bitter. Things could be a lot worse. Two years, five months, and seven days have passed since the move was announced (not that we’re counting), and the team that left is not reflected quite so strongly in the orange-clad one that will take the field tonight. For every Dwayne De Rosario or Brian Mullan, there is a Bobby Boswell or Stuart Holden, guys that Quakes fans have no particular feelings about. Only 11 players on the Dynamo roster have ever worn the Quakes’ colors, and one of them, Richard Mulrooney, left San Jose at the end of the 2004 season. Think how jarring it would have been had there been a 2006 San Jose Earthquakes to play against the 2006 Dynamo. Houston has Kinnear but the Quakes have Frank Yallop and trainer Bruce Morgan, the latter of whom is the only person on Earth who has attended, in person, every San Jose match in MLS history. (Can that be said of anyone about any other MLS team? We don’t know but we doubt it. Do not underestimate the Morgan mojo.)

More importantly, San Jose finally has committed owners. Lew Wolff and company have already invested more money in improving the Quakes than any of the team’s previous operators, and that commitment will be on display tonight. Despite whatever sentimental attachment fans have to Spartan Stadium, Buck Shaw is now a better place to see a game. The field is perfect and will remain so, thanks to the fact that college football will never be played there. The seats — even the temporary ones — are at least as nice as those at Spartan, and the new lighting, sound system, and video board at Buck Shaw all show Spartan to be the relic it is. If that’s not enough, drive by 1125 Coleman Avenue tonight and take a look at the 74.8 acre plot that Wolff’s team of investors will start paying for next month, and picture a new stadium, practice fields, hotels, 75,000 square feet of retail, and over a million square feet of office space. That’s the kind of ambitious thinking that will do this soccer team proud and, best of all, it will remove all speculation about the team’s future viability.

Tonight will undoubtedly be a reunion, but it’s more than that. It’s a meeting of San Jose’s soccer past with its future. And no matter how glorious the past was, it was unsustainable because the team simply wasn’t able to turn a profit. The future will be different, and while the team’s current place at the bottom of the table is not pleasing to anyone, the stage is set for even brighter days than we have seen here in the past.

On to the headlines:

- “Departed Earthquakes return to San Jose a Dynamo,” Associated Press
- “Dynamo back where it all began,” Houston Chronicle, which includes the scoop that Kinnear will be having lunch today at The Freshly Baked Eatery on 3rd Street in downtown San Jose “at about 11:01.”
- “Once they were mourned; now old Quakes are the main rival,” in which the Mercury News once again demonstrates how out of touch they are by claiming that Houston and not the L.A. Galaxy are now the Quakes’ archenemies.
- “The once and future Earthquakes meet,” San Francisco Chronicle. Reporter Tom FitzGerald almost gets it right when he says, “For the fans, it will be like seeing a new spouse side-by-side with a former one, when the ex-spouse is a Hollywood star and the new spouse is waiting tables.” Actually, for the fans, their ex-spouse actually is married to a Hollywood star, but their new spouse is a billionaire who’s getting ready to build them a mansion.
- “Quakes trade for Kirovski, Gray,” Soccer America

Breaking down the trade

Obviously it takes time to see if a trade is good, bad or ugly, but my initial grading of the deal that brought Kelly Gray and Jovan Kirovski  to San Jose in exchange for Preston Burpo and a draft pick came out at a C+. After getting some more information, it’s now up to a B-. Here’s why.

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Wrapping up a Wednesday

Now that the UEFA Champions League final is over with — we won’t reveal the result, but we will say that nothing anywhere nearly as spectacular as Zinedine Zidane’s strike in the 2002 final occurred — we’ll get on with Wednesday’s news.

We’ll start with the big picture. As we reported yesterday, the San Jose City Council has set the stage for the sale of the Airport West property to a team of investors led by John Fisher and Lew Wolff, owners of the Earthquakes. This 74.8 acre site, located at 1125 Coleman Avenue in San Jose, includes a 13.5 acre portion which has been designated for the construction of a stadium for the Quakes and the parking lots that go with it. The story is covered in the Mercury News as well as the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.

In case you’re not excited about this — granted, bureaucracy in action is not likely to become the latest hit reality show — you should be. Over the course of the next six weeks, Wolff’s team of investors will almost certainly complete the agreements that were outlined yesterday and hand over a check for $3 million to San Jose, securing an option to purchase the property which they’ve chosen to serve as a permanent home for soccer in the Bay Area. While Quakes fans know that nothing is done until it is done, it’s important to recognize the commitment that those dollars represent.

Speaking of the Champions League, as Jeff Carlisle reported yesterday, the Quakes have just acquired the only American to ever win that competition, Jovan Kirovski. Kirovski was with Borussia Dortmund in 1997 when they lifted the famous cup, and now he and prodigal son Kelly Gray have joined the Earthquakes. He’s also remembered among U.S. fans for scoring a spectacular goal against Germany in a 1999 friendly, which you can see here and here, in a view from inside Oliver Kahn’s goal (note: QuickTime files). The team’s press release notes that the Quakes also sent a fourth round pick in the 2009 SuperDraft to Colorado in the deal, and we expect to have even more details to report in the coming days.

Kelly Gray’s return is also good news, and it also sets up some sort of a weird mega-reunion on Thursday night. Gray was born in Palo Alto and attended Leigh High School in San Jose before he left to seek his fortune, first at the University of Portland and then with the Chicago Fire. He returned to San Jose to play with the Quakes in 2005 and has since played in Houston, L.A., and Colorado. Now, he’s headed back to the Bay Area and both he and Kirovski will be available to play Thursday against a Houston team that features 11 former Quakes.

Speaking of pre-game stories, we’ve got a bunch:

- ESPN SoccerNet, by our own Jeff Carlisle
- USA Today, by friend of the blog Beau Dure
- MLSnet.com, by the ubiquitous Carlisle
- the “just the facts, ma’am” preview from MLSnet.com.

Finally, we have a brief update on the Darren Huckerby watch. At the end of this story in the Toronto Globe & Mail, reporter Larry Millson notes the following:

…winger Darren Huckerby is still a possibility for TFC. There is a feeling that a deal could be close although he has yet to reveal his intentions. The feeling is it might be a family decision.

“There is a feeling”? Did Millson interview someone or conduct a seance? In any case, we hope that there is a feeling among Huckerby and his family that California is a much better place to live than Ontario.

Another step (or two or three) forward

In a season that’s been short on good news so far, Quakes fans got a double dip of happy reading this week with the Kirovski/Gray trade, and another big step forward on the stadium deal.

First, Kirovski and Gray. When I read on CLS that a deal was in the wind, my first thought was, “who do the Quakes have to trade?” When a team’s earned four points in seven games, there’s not many attractive items to put up on the block. But I had forgotten Preston Burpo, who hasn’t played an MLS minute this season. Burpo was ticketed to be the starter in San Jose until Joe Cannon showed up, and from what I saw during his days with Chivas USA, he’s not a bad bet. He now gets the chance he deserves to be a starting MLS goalkeeper, at least when Bouna Coundoul goes off to play World Cup qualifiers for Senegal.

In exchange, the starved-for-offense Quakes get two guys are good with the ball. Jovan Kirovski, the only American-born player to win a Champions League medal (in ’97, with Borussia Dortmund) has scored eight, five, five, and six goals in his four MLS seasons, playing as both an attacking midfielder and/or a withdrawn forward. I’d like to see him in midfield myself – “attacking midfielder” is something rare for the Quakes this year.

Kelly Gray is another re-Quake, having played 20 games for the 2005 version, and is a San Jose hometown boy to boot. He’s simply a good soccer player, listed as a defender but can play midfield if needed.

Both players fit the Yallop mold: solid MLS vets who should be getting some minutes (or pressing the current starters to a higher level). Not bad in exchange for someone who’d only get off the bench in case of emergency. The Quakes still have to make a move or two during the July transfer window to become truly competitive, but it’s good to see Doyle and Yallop are on the job as the build-a-team-from-scratch project continues.

The other bit of good news is actually great news for Quakes fans: a unanimous vote by the San Jose City Council approved the deal to sell the Quakes owners the land needed for the stadium (along with a rather large hotel/retail/office/and whatever-else-they-can-think-of) project. Unanimous. I like the sound of that.

People outside the Bay Area might not pay much attention to this, thinking that everything was all good stadium-wise the minute Lew Wolff and John Fisher wrote their first big check to MLS. But people who live around here know how hard it is for projects this big to be approved and built. Yes, the vote went as expected, but Quakes fans will breathe a little easier speaking of this element of the stadium project approval process in the past tense.

While I’m on a soccer and progress kick, let me also cheer the announcement last week of the CONCACAF Champions League schedule. This tournament will involve 24 clubs (four from the U.S.) and will replace the Champions Cup that had only 16 teams participate. The CCL begins right after SuperLiga this summer, with matches on August 26.

Some of the most attractive games I’ve seen involving MLS teams have been in these international tournaments, and it’s great that four MLS clubs (Houston, DC, New England, and Chivas USA) will be taking part in both the CCL and SuperLiga. This means at least five and as many as 14 more games between now and the end of October for each of those teams (if you include both tournaments). Yes, this might stretch some already thin rosters, but it will also reward viewers with some quality games, and successful clubs with some quality cash.

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