I would hope that there is, someday, a statue of Chris Wondolowski outside of Avaya Stadium. He is the local kid made good, a local god who's squeezed every last ounce of production out of his god-given potential and turned all of the above into the most metronomically consistent goalscoring in MLS history. Wondo burst onto the scene with 18 goals in 2010, then followed it up with 16, then 27 in his remarkable 2012 season, then 11 despite a broken foot, then 14, then 16, then 12, then 13.
Eight straight years with double-digit goals is easily a league record. Nobody else has more than five.
And all of that has brought Wondo to the precipice of any league's holy grail: The all-time scoring lead. He is very close:
He is also, now, 35 years old. And while age wasn't much of a factor last season – he played a career-high 3,041 minutes and added a career-best eight assists to his 13 goals, including a 2g/3a end-of-season run as the Quakes made the playoffs in dramatic fashion – Father Time is, indeed, undefeated. He will come for Wondo eventually.
The Quakes have not stood pat waiting for it to happen, but have, instead, invested heavily in their attack. They brought Dutch center forward Danny Hoesen back permanently (and my guess is they'll actually play him as a center forward rather than as a misplaced winger), and they added new DP Magnus Eriksson, who was the top scorer in Sweden last year. Both those guys are in their prime, as is last year's DP addition, Vako Qazaishvili. They will all be aiming for minutes that, in the past, were guaranteed to be Wondo's.
And that brings us to an interesting dynamic: How do you convince a legend that his best role is as a part-time player or as a super-sub? Wondo might not be there quite yet (it should be noted that he smoked all of the above players in the beep test, and that he's been consistently starting during preseason), but the day is coming. Chances are it'll be sooner than later, and if that's indeed the case then Donovan's scoring record will probably last another year.
