SAN JOSE, Calif. – Chris Leitch wouldn’t cop to suffering from much nervousness as he made his first San Jose Earthquakes coaching appearance against the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday.
“There were a little bit of excited moments in there,” Leitch told reporters after the Quakes’ 2-1 victory pushed them into the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinals. “Less nervous, though, because this is a good group and a good staff … When you have those things, you become less nervous, for sure. First game, hadn’t seen the bright lights on the field that close for a while. So you could get a little of that good energy, I would say.”
Now Leitch can show off that sangfroid as he makes his league debut on the Quakes’ biggest regular-season stage: the annual Stanford Stadium edition of the California Clásico against the archrival LA Galaxy on Saturday (10:30 pm ET | Univision, facebook.com/univisiondeportes; MLS LIVE in Canada). Beating a depleted Seattle side in cup play before a two-thirds full Avaya Stadium is one thing; taking on the Galaxy in front of an expected crowd of 50,000 fans and a national TV audience on Univision is another.
Wednesday’s performance was a chance for the Quakes players to work through some of the shock at the abrupt transition to Leitch, who took over on Sunday after general manager Jesse Fioranelli made the decision to cut loose former coach Dominic Kinnear and his top lieutenant, John Spencer.
“The players have been extremely professional,” said Leitch, who moved from his role as technical director. “I’m not going to sugarcoat that; it’s hard when a group loses its head coach, especially with a coach like Dominic Kinnear, who’s had so much success and put so much into this team, that’s for sure. But I’ll tell you this right now; from my perception, they have not skipped a beat as far as being extremely professional in how they’ve approached trainings, how they’ve approached this game. I can’t say this enough: I like this group. I think they’ve got a lot out in front of them.”
The move might have been taken hardest by team captain Chris Wondolowski, who was so flooded with emotion on Monday that he offered apologies and walked away from his press session after just the second question.
“It’s part of the game,” a composed Wondolowski said Wednesday. “It’s a business and you lose friends and mentors, but all in all, it’s still our group in the locker room and we’re still unified. We know we have each others’ backs. We kind of like that. We kind of like us-against-the-world type [things].”
In terms of Leitch’s preferred style on the pitch, LA coach Curt Onalfo and his staff might not be able to build too deep of a scouting report based on Wednesday’s performance. Leitch brought the Quakes out in a 3-5-2 formation with Anibal Godoy sitting deep in midfield as a shield for the three-back line and Jahmir Hyka and Jackson Yueill looking to create opportunities in the center of the park. Since the look seemed to embody the more forceful attacking style that Fioranelli wants his club to apply, could it be seen again against the Galaxy?
“It could,” Leitch said. “We don’t want to tell LA everything. We’ll see.”
Perhaps the most telling aspects were more in the way in which San Jose went about their business offensively. There were still plenty of crosses from the wings, but with more bodies in the box looking to latch onto the opportunities. Instead of playing the ball in a straight-line fashion up one sideline as a primary mode of generating those crosses, San Jose often went diagonally through the middle of the pitch, probing for openings in the center channels before turning loose one of the overlapping wingbacks – Kip Colvey and Shea Salinas.
It all led to a first half in which San Jose kept Seattle without a shot before the Sounders – reduced to 10 men after 35 minutes – brought on Will Bruin at the break and reasserted themselves after intermission. A wicked free-kick goal from Aaron Kovar knotted the score, requiring the 84th-minute game-winner from Danny Hoesen.
“I thought we started pretty darn well,” Leitch said. “I thought we had control of the game, and we were moving it pretty well, pretty sharply. I think you go up a goal, up a man, you’d like to bury that game a little bit better, but that being said, I think the effort all the way around was very good.”
