SAN JOSE, Calif. – Former Portland Timbers head coach and current San Jose Earthquakes assistant John Spencer could sense his new team was ready to break out offensively – maybe even against his old club.
“Coach Spencer said it for a couple of weeks: ‘I feel a game coming where we’re going to put a couple goals on someone,’” Quakes captain Chris Wondolowski said after scoring twice in San Jose’s 3-0 victory against Portlandon Saturday night. “He said it, and we really believed it. It’s nice to come to fruition.”
The outcome – San Jose’s largest margin of victory since pasting Sporting Kansas City 5-0 in August 2015 – was exactly what the Quakes were hoping for when they brought Danny Hoesen, Jahmir Hyka and Marco Ureña to MLS this winter.
With their three offensive-minded newcomers surrounding Wondolowski, the Quakes put in a composed and controlling performance, marking their most complete game of the season against one of the Western Conference’s top squads.
In addition to his third and fourth goals of 2016, Wondolowski added another assist of his own – his fifth in just 10 games – to set up Hyka for the opening goal. The quartet of Hoesen, Hyka, Ureña and Wondolowski combined for 14 of San Jose’s 17 shots on the evening, forcing four of Portland goalkeeper Jeff Attinella’s five saves.
“The freedom and the interchange that we have, it’s a great thing,” Wondolowski said of San Jose’s front four. “I thought that we’ve been playing well at times throughout this whole year, but it was nice, especially offensively, to finally click and to see the final result.”
It was San Jose’s second multi-goal performance of the season, following a 3-2 win March 11 against a Vancouver side reduced to 10 men for more than an hour.
Hoesen, a center forward by trade, started for a second consecutive match on the left wing, bringing a maximum level of firepower from coach Dominic Kinnear to bear on Attinella, who looked shaky at the outset. As with last week in Minnesota, the move led to a victory, giving the Quakes their first winning streak since mid-March.
“After the loss to Houston [on April 22], it was a very dismal feeling,” Kinnear said. “We had more than enough meetings leading up to that week against Minnesota. And when you walk off the field against Minnesota with the win, it’s going to give you confidence. If you want to say the moves work, we always say the players make the moves work.”
