Earthquakes Announce Assistants for 2019

The San Jose Earthquakes revealed the rest of new manager Matias Almeyda’s staff on Tuesday. Omar Zarif and Benjamin “El Mastro” Galindo will serve as assistant coaches, Carlos Roa comes on as a goalkeeper coach, Guido Bonini will oversee strength and conditioning, and Fabio Alvarez will take over as the team’s kinesiologist. Out are Steve Ralston who has been with the club since 2015 and Greg Tella who had been the Earthquakes fitness coach since 2010.

With these new additions, the Earthquakes add a tremendous amount of soccer knowledge and global experience. Both Roa and Galindo have represented their nations in the World Cup and even the youngest addition 32-year-old Bonini has years of experience working with Almeyda. Roa will work alongside Jyri Nieminen who was the goalkeeper coach for San Jose in 2018.

These may be major changes but Almeyda made it clear he wants these new additions to blend with the current staff stating, “Incorporating our jobs with the people that are already here, I believe we can make a good team for the players that they can trust and feel comfortable with. I want them to know that they can make mistakes, but with each mistake, there is a lesson.”

With this changes, the Earthquakes front office showed that they have full trust in Almedyas plan for the team and they seem to be giving him a lot of control over staffing decisions although they may have had little choice with Almeyda saying “I’m very happy because I won’t go anywhere without them. I would never go to a new team alone or with just one or two of them. This is not my job alone. My job will always be with them.” When the transfer window opens up next year we will see if the Earthquakes are willing to open up their wallets.

For now Earthquakes fans can distract themselves from the epic that is the Major League Soccer playoffs (epic as in they are really long and no one really knows when they are over) with good news from San Jose. The rebuilding project continues.