The San Jose Earthquakes are coming off of their first bye weekend of the 2016 season, and while many of the Quakes players were away at international matches, the rest of the first team continued to prepare for the upcoming contest against D.C. United.
“I’m OK with it because for us, it’s around the international games,” said Earthquakes head coach Dominic Kinnear. “We would have been struggling to field a squad. I think you want to keep playing, obviously, but knowing what the schedule was, it was a good time for us.”
San Jose is off to a fast start this season, holding a 2-1-0 record, including a spotless 2-0-0 record at Avaya Stadium. Some would argue that the break comes at a bad time, slowing momentum generated by the first three games of the season, while others may look at the injury report and deem the break to be positive. Meanwhile, D.C. United continued to play last weekend, falling 3-0 to FC Dallas on Saturday. Kinnear doesn’t view the rest vs. rust conversation as one with a defined result.
“It’s always a question that doesn’t really have an answer until the game’s over because you can have some rest and play great, or you can have some rest and not play so good. There are always two outcomes for it.”
But the team continued to train and prepare despite the absence of several key players vital to this weekend’s contest, including forward and captain Chris Wondolowski and goalkeeper David Bingham, in addition to several others.
“It differs a lot because you can’t do a lot of 11v11 things because you don’t have the players. You have to keep things small-sided and short and sharp and just make sure that your squad is healthy coming out of this because let’s be honest, we have some guys injured and some guys away. We want to make sure these guys get a good training session, but it’s not too taxing, so when our guys come back, our squad is complete and healthy.”
