SAN JOSE, Calif. – Practice, we’re told, makes perfect. The 2011 San Jose Earthquakes might beg to differ.
Last week, the Quakes spared no ounce of energy during the week trying to right their ship after a disappointing performance in New York. Coach Frank Yallop put his players through their paces and praised their work ethic.
The payoff, however, seemed a cruel joke: a 2-1 home loss to Chivas USA in which San Jose became the first team in the league this season to score first and lose.
This week, the Quakes again hit the practice field hard. Yallop said after Tuesday’s session that his team’s look “was like night and day. If we’d played [against Chivas] like we trained this morning, we’d have won the game.”
So then how, exactly, do the Quakes translate that practice form into actual points against Philadelphia at PPL Park on Saturday (1 pm ET, Direct Kick, MatchDay Live)?
[inline_node:334697]“There’s no secret recipe,” Quakes goalkeeper Jon Busch told MLSsoccer.com after Friday’s practice. “It’s just taking [the effort] from Monday through Friday and putting it in on Saturday as well. We’ve worked very, very hard this week. We know how important it is tomorrow.”
For Yallop, the search for Saturday night specials – well, in this case, late-afternoon specials – will guide his lineup selections to some extent. The coach will have to find a replacement for attacking midfielder Simon Dawkins, who did not make the trip because of a calf injury. He also threatened a major shakeup after the desultory defeat to the previously winless Goats.
“Obviously, the big stage and the big spotlight is when you’ve got to make sure that you are ready to go, and that’s the games,” Yallop said. “It’s OK being in training and showing like you care, showing commitment and desire, but then [it’s not OK] when it comes to the games you don’t show it.
"It should be the other way around. I should be saying, ‘We need to pick it up in practice a little bit,’ because some of the players are going, ‘We want a rest because we played so hard on the weekend.’”
When a team is outplayed, it’s easy to paint the whole roster with the “loafing” brush, but it’s not simply a matter of greater physical exertion. The Quakes have often lost their shape during these last two games, leading to players who are too close or too far from one another. That contributes mightily to the lack of cohesion that San Jose players such as Jason Hernandez alluded to last weekend.
“It’s mental as well as physical [problems] the last two weeks,” Busch said. “We’ve discussed getting rid of the mental mistakes and making sure we’re physically ready from minute 1 to minute 90.”
In the meantime, the Quakes will try to stay calm and find their center on the pitch Saturday.
“You can’t hit panic buttons,” defender Brandon McDonald said. “We’re a team. We stick together. We go down together and we win together. This time we’ve just got to look ourselves in the mirror and dig deep, find what it is we need to do to come out with these results.”
Geoff Lepper covers the Earthquakes for MLSsoccer.com. He can be reached at sanjosequakes@gmail.com. On Twitter: @sjquakes
