SAN JOSE, Calif. – Chris Wondolowski knew better than to get too comfortable at the point of the San Jose Earthquakes’ attack.
“It’s such a long season, there will definitely be some guys in and out,” Wondolowski told reporters last month. “You always have to change the formation. Nothing’s ever set in stone.”
Five matches into the MLS season, the Quakes appear to have chiseled out their first formation change. After inserting Adam Jahn at halftime of an eventual 2-1 loss to New England two weeks ago, the third-year target forward got his first start of 2015, going the full 90 minutes in a 1-0 defeat to Real Salt Lake on Saturday.
Jahn’s presence came at the expense of JJ Koval, who watched Fatai Alashe open up as a lone holding midfielder. Wondolowski and Matias Perez Garcia combined to help fill some of the box-to-box contributions that Koval had been tasked with making in earlier matches. Koval eventually came on as an emergency right back after Shaun Francis suffered a heavy collision with RSL’s Jordan Allen late in the first half.
Playing off a target man puts Wondolowski in the underneath striker position where he has most often seen time for the Quakes – including 2012, when he poured home a club-record 27 goals in league play. Against RSL, however, Wondolowski was held without a shot on goal.
“We just want to get our best 11 players out there,” Wondolowski said after the match. “Formations are just numbers out there. You still have to play. You still have to pass. You still have to move out on the field. It doesn’t matter where you are. I didn’t get on the ball enough and wasn’t able to connect on the ball in the offensive third. …I think I still have room to improve, but I do like the role.”
As a second striker, Wondolowski has typically used the runs of target forwards such as Jahn, the departed Alan Gordon or the currently injured Steven Lenhart to help create exploitable spaces in the box. Under Kinnear’s high-pressure formula, the demands seem to be slightly different, pulling Wondolowski farther down the pitch.
“We’ve been trying to overload the midfield, get guys around the ball,” Wondolowski told reporters before the RSL match. “You need to have that. …You have Matias, and whether it’s JJ or JB [Jean-Baptiste Pierazzi] or Fatai in there – you get myself in there, too – if you have the right movement, you can open up space and then get the ball down and start playing. If you play one- or two-touch and get the ball moving, it’s hard to defend.”
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Kinnear made it clear with his offseason moves that he wasn’t going to abandon the Quakes’ history of using target forwards. In addition to keeping Jahn and re-signing Lenhart, San Jose also added Mark Sherrod, another powerful forward who is coming back from knee surgery after blowing out his ACL last May.
Even without Lenhart and Sherrod, the Quakes have already improved their attack, statistically speaking; San Jose are currently tied for seventh at 1.2 goals per game this season, after finishing 18th out of 19 clubs in 2014. And as Kinnear noted, the Quakes still have room for improvement.
“What would I like to see? A little more quality,” Kinnear said after the match. “You’d like to have a little bit better possession to kind of open some things up, but obviously the other team has a little something to say about that, too. So I thought we had some good chances today and just want to see us play with a little more confidence. Movement off the ball could be a little better at times, and we’ve got to sometimes be a little bit more unselfish when we get closer to goal.”
