Saturday’s pre-game press

Today, we have the latest in the series of matches that can be called, “the biggest game of the year so far.” In fact, combined with Wednesday night’s match in Houston, we’ll go so far as to say this is the biggest week of the year so far, and it’s going to be the last big week of the year unless the Earthquakes find their way into the playoffs.

We won’t try to reiterate anything Tim Hanley wrote in his expert pre-game analysis, but  we will note that Chivas will be missing both Sacha Kljestan and Shavar Thomas due to international call-ups and that first-choice forwards Maykel Galindo and Ante Razov are both listed as questionable for the match due to various ailments. While it’s true that the Quakes have injury problems of their own — whether Darren Huckerby plays is a game-time decision — San Jose probably doesn’t deserve a playoff berth if they can’t pull down all three points tonight at Buck Shaw.

Here’s the pre-game press wrap:

- In the Mercury News, Elliott Almond turns in a great profile of Ryan Johnson, who’s been a real surprise for the Quakes this year.  Not only does Almond talk with Johnson’s wife, Donna, but he actually tracked down his mother, Ingrid, for a couple quotes. Nice to see the Merc hitting the human interest angle here.

- Writing for MLSnet.com, our own Jeff Carlisle takes a look at the match, talking with Quakes manager Frank Yallop and former Chivas defender Jason Hernandez.

- Online, we have previews from Goal.com and  Yahoo! Sports.