Time For A New Start

The San Jose Earthquakes are back to training next Monday and it is a big jump in the unknown that Frank Yallop's team is ready to make.

Last year, at the same period, the club and its fans were full of hopes after the good end of 2008 season they had. Making the playoffs seemed a very reachable goal and was the least the fans were expecting.

One year later, the symbol of all the Quakes' hopes, Darren Huckerby, is gone and, with him, a lot of illusions are lost.

Everything went wrong in 2009 (Ronnie O'Brien's departure, Jason Hernandez and Darren Huckerby's injuries, 2008 team captain Nick Garcia's departure in the middle of the season, very disappointing performances from the team, bad luck the only few times the team played well, etc...For a more detailed story about what happened in the first half of 2009, click here) and the only positive thing to say about last Earthquakes' season is that it is over!

In many aspects, the Earthquakes seem to be back two years earlier, when they were an expansion team with everything to build.

Apart from Joe Cannon, the only player who had a better 2009 season than in 2008, the few key and/or historical members of the team who remained at the club all had a terrible year:

Ronnie O'Brien refused a revised Quakes' offer and left the club, Jason Hernandez came back from the January USA training camp with an ankle injury which ended up requiring surgery and kept him away for the whole season, Darren Huckerby never overcame his hip pain and had to end his career, Bobby Convey was very disappointing, Ramiro Corrales, the new team captain and Frank Yallop's man of confidence showed very poor performances and Ryan Johnson, if he made himself indispensable to the team, is not the cold blooded finisher that the Quakes desperately need..

On top of that, Shea Salinas, who almost made the fans forget Ronnie O'Brien in the second part of the season was incredibly left unprotected by the staff in the expansion draft and was picked by the Philadelphia Union.

Now, what's next? Because of injuries, constant player's transfers activity and also because of a lack of constancy in the players' form, Frank Yallop, who usually doesn't like to change his starting line up too often, almost never could start 2 games in a row with the same 11 players and, even worse, he changed at least one defender or center midfielder at almost every game!

Without a basis of key players on whom he can rely to offer constant performances to stabilize the defensive block, there is absolutely no reason to think that 2010 will be better than 2009.

Constancy, stability: this is what the staff needs to work at. Starting the season with the core of the team that would remain the same until the end of the season is indispensable.

This is probably the reason why Yallop decided to protect Ramiro Corrales from the expansion draft. Despite his poor 2009 season, he is the team captain and the Quakes' head coach counts on his experience as a leader. He also knows that constantly moving him from center midfield to left back didn't help him and Corrales will for sure settle as the #1 left defender this year.

Andre Luiz, who has a contract for 3 more years, and Ramon Sanchez have shown interesting things in the last part of last season. They might help stabilizing the team.

But many questions remain:

In defense: Will Jason Hernandez be back to his best and will he be reliable enough to be the boss of the defense? Will Ike Opara already be strong enough to be the other starting central defender? If not, who, amongst Aaron Pitchkolan, Bobby Burling and Brandon McDonald, is more likely to be able to replace them?

On the wings: Is Bobby Convey going to finally become the leading player he was supposed to be on the left wing? Is it really a good idea to play Arturo Alvarez on the right side, even though he can't cross with his right foot? If not, who will the team hire to play in this position?

Upfront: Will the club finally make the necessary financial effort to bring a real striker/finisher who would be the perfect complement to Ryan Johnson?

Frank Yallop will need to find answers very quickly...The preseason starts next Monday and recent history shows it won't be too long to find the good solutions.