Heading into the 55th minute of last night’s match, the Quakes found themselves in the driver seat.
Adam Jahn had just powered home a header past Houston Dynamo goalkeeper Tyler Deric off of a quick set piece from Matias Perez Garcia to give San Jose a 1-0 lead at BBVA Compass Stadium.
Four minutes later, San Jose was forced back on their heels as Boniek Garcia carved through the Quakes defense before being taken down in the area for a penalty kick.
Just like that, the momentum seemed to shift in favor of the home side.
For Quakes goalkeeper David Bingham, it was time to play spoiler.
“From my point of view, it was a little bit of a broken play,” Bingham explained. “The ball took a favorable bounce for them and they get inside the box. I knew there weren’t any runners in the box. We had defenders crashing the six-yard box and bodies at the box post.
“He takes a heavy touch back across me and my feet are set, so he ends up running into me. There’s a little contact on the play and he ends up going down and gets the call.”
Bingham, in an effort to close down space, clipped Garcia with a dragging right foot. The contact was enough for the head referee to point to the spot, setting up Houston for a golden opportunity to turn their early season fortunes around.
“This all happened pretty soon after we scored,” Bingham said. “They’ve had a few unfortunate results in their past few matches recently and maybe if they scored on the penalty kick, that gets their heads up a little more and that was definitely something we didn’t want.”
With emotions running high on the pitch, Bingham remained composed in his retreat to the goal line. Just as he did as a kid in Castro Valley and as a college goalkeeper at Cal, Bingham resorted to his penalty kick routine: The stare down.
“I’m just focusing on him. He’s a great player. He probably finishes his PK’s nine times out of 10, but it was my job to get that one save,” Bingham said. “During the build up to the kick, I was looking right at him. For me, that’s something I like to do. I like to look at them and just stand still instead of bouncing around.
“As he approached the ball, I had already committed to diving to my left, so I was able to get down quick enough and get my hand on it.”
With a leap to his left and a palm to Barnes’ shot, the ball trickled to the left of the post for a corner kick. As he sprung to his feet, a herd of blue jersey’s smothered him in celebration. Before he could bark out defensive assignments, Bingham felt a blow to his chest that startled the East Bay native.
“I definitely got hit in the chest, and I think it was Wondo,” Bingham laughed. “He has a habit of doing that when he gets excited, so I get hit and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Man, that kind of hurt.’
“Making that save was obviously a great feeling, there’s no lying about that,” Bingham admitted. “The most important part about all of it at that moment was defending the corner kick. I was thinking that if I saved that PK but they score on this corner kick, it was all for nothing.”
In an effort to peel his teammates off of him, Bingham catches a Dynamo player carrying the ball to the corner flag. At this point, the organization begins.
“One of the Dynamo players took the ball and headed to the corner, so immediately I yell at the guys to get in their spots so we didn’t get a quick one scored on us like we got on them.”
To the pleasure of the 10 men in front of him, the ball was corralled midair by Bingham and punted into the Dynamo’s defensive half, relieving pressure from their backline and keeping the Dynamo at bay.
Bingham had arguably made the biggest play of the game and helped secure a big three points looking ahead to Friday’s match against the Colorado Rapids.
Keyword: arguably.
“I wouldn’t call my save the biggest play of the game,” Bingham said. “If Adam [Jahn] doesn’t score, we don’t get three points on the road. For me that was the biggest play of the game. I just did what I was supposed to do.”
