The last question for midfielder Shea Salinas at halftime of the San Jose Earthquakes’ game on Wednesday night wasn’t actually a question at all.
“Don’t you stop taking Chance Myers on,” the Quakes’ broadcaster told Salinas, referring to Sporting Kansas City’s tormented right back.
“I will not do that,” replied Salinas, who was making his 100th career MLS start as a Quake. “I will keep going at him.”
It was the perfect encapsulation of the Quakes’ best night of 2015. Up three at the break, San Jose ended up rolling to a 5-0 victory against Sporting, bolstering their playoff hopes with the club’s biggest scoring night on the road since 2001.
“It was just a night where a lot of stuff really went good for us,” Quakes coach Dominic Kinnear told MLSsoccer.com by phone Thursday. “In other games, and we’ve had some looks at goal, and for whatever reason -- defending or lack of execution – it hasn’t happened. You look at the goals that we scored, even the movement leading up to the penalty, it was good play. We had good numbers around the box. We didn’t rush anything. We created a lot of chances, and it was good to see.”
With the game out of hand early, perhaps the biggest competition of the night was an intra-roster battle among the Quakes, who saw a host of players bidding to claim their best-ever performance in a San Jose uniform.
Salinas had his first two-assist night since the 2014 season-opener. Cordell Cato scored his first career MLS brace. Anibal Godoy, making just his second appearance since signing with San Jose, helped boss the midfield and contributed a beautiful counterattacking goal. And Quincy Amarikwa – though credited with only one assist – helped spring Salinas to set up both Cato scores, earned the PK that became Chris Wondolowki’s first tally and drew a cherry-on-the-ice-cream-sundae red card against Benny Feilhaber in the 71st minute.
“The key for us, and we spoke about it before the game: our first pass out of pressure needs to be good,” Kinnear said. “We can’t just clear the ball and hope, because they do like to pressure you high. And I thought Chris and Quincy, especially, held the ball up for us enough to where we could get support around the ball. And when that happened, it gave us room to run.”
No one took more advantage of that space than Salinas and Cato. With playmaker Matias Perez Garcia unavailable due to a left hamstring injury and Godoy and Fatai Alashe manning the center of midfield, the Quakes leaned for an attacking spark on their wingers, who connected twice in eerily similar fashion on goals early in each half.
While Salinas was repeatedly shedding Myers and reaching the end line, Cato was deftly cutting in from the right side to provide a third runner behind Amarikwa and Wondolowski.
“We asked Cordell to pinch inside because we thought that was an area where we could [succeed],” Kinnear said. “If you hang out wide against these guys, it makes your play so predictable that it’s easy to play against. When there is movement on the inside, there can be a bit of space. Now, in saying that, that space can close really quickly. And I thought Cordell did a good job of receiving the ball and moving it on.”
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The victory might have also served as the perfect rejoinder to fans who felt signing Godoy at the deadline of this month’s transfer window was not impactful enough on the attacking end to put San Jose back in the hunt for a playoff spot. The Panamanian international again showed a masterful ability to gobble up space defensively and helped the Quakes stop their previous tendency to play poor passes immediately after gaining possession.
“His ability to hold the ball and pass under pressure was really key for us,” Kinnear said of Godoy. “He made a lot of good decisions where he was holding the ball off under pressure and making the right decision, making the right pass where it opened up a ton of space for us. So I thought they both, Fatai and Anibal, were good. Their ability to pass out of pressure really got us going. When a first ball goes forward, it can do a lot of good things for you, and those guys were key for us in that area.”
