The defensive awkwardness of the San Jose Earthquakes is a problem for Major League Soccer

Yuya Kubo of FC Cincinnati celebrates a goal with Luciano Acosta and Gerardo Valenzuela #22 against… [+] San Jose earthquakes. Kubo became the 11th player in MLS history to score a hat-trick in 10 minutes or less.

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Luciano Acosta is one of the greatest MLS players of all time, reigning MLS Player of the Year Landon Donovan and a dark horse candidate to wrestle the award again if FC Cincinnati continues to bounce back during the second half of the season.

But what he and Yuya Kubo did for the San Jose Earthquakes in the closing stages of a 4-2 away win on Saturday night rarely happens to an MLS defense.

Acosta provided the primary assist on each of Kubo's three goals between the 78th and 87th minutes, as the Japanese veteran scored just his 11th MLS hat-trick in 10 minutes or less in league history.

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It's something you expect to see only once every few years. In fact, it only happened twice between 1999 and 2021, over the course of 23 MLS seasons.

Provided that “you” in this case do not have the misfortune of being a Quakes supporter. You then watched the last two times your team took the field.

Kubo's nine-minute hat-trick came just 15 days after New York City FC substitute Alonso Martinez scored a 10-minute hat-trick in the Citizens' 5-1 home win against the same San Jose defense. This makes the 2024 Quakes the only team ever to give up multiple 10-minute hat tricks in the same MLS season, let alone back-to-back games. In fact, San Jose is the only club to be listed multiple times as a defensive lineman of the 11 all-time MLS hat-tricks scored in 10 minutes or less.

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“It will be painful because we had the game in our hands until we didn't,” head coach Lucie Gonzalez said afterwards about the match. “It's about control. We control the next moment and we'll never give up. I'll never give up. These guys won't give up. We'll learn and keep trying to figure it out. That's what we can control.”

MLS hat tricks in 10 minutes or less

Chronologically

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9 minutes: Jose Vazquez, Los Angeles (vs. Saint-Germain) – September 21, 1997, 9 minutes: Digital Taqueira, KC (vs. Northeastern) – May 16, 1998, 5 minutes: Harut Karapetyan, Los Angeles (vs. Dahl) – June 4, 1998 10 minutes: Stern John, CLB (vs. KC) – August 16, 1998, 8 minutes: Alejandro Moreno, LA (vs. DC) – May 19, 2004, 9 minutes: Dwayne De Rosario, DC (vs. RSL ) – September 24, 2011. 6 minutes: Hani Mokhtar, NSH (vs. Chile) – July 17, 2021 9 minutes: Sebastian Giovinco, Tor (vs. New York City) – July 12, 2015, 10 minutes: Jesus Ferreira, D (vs. Bor ) – March 19, 2022, 10 minutes: Alonso Martinez, NY (vs. SJ) – May 31, 2024, 9 minutes: Yuya Kubo, Sen (vs. SJ) – June 15, 2024

Source: 2024 Major League Soccer Factbook and Records

The particular part of the Quakes' notorious history may apply to Gonzalez's group, but the bigger picture points to a much broader organizational problem than the manager or even the athletic director. Because this is just one of the worst points in seven years of wandering through a defensive wilderness that has been so astonishingly consistent that NFL Commissioner Don Garber should be concerned about the outward appearance that one of his teams isn't really trying.

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The back-to-back hat tricks are part of much larger defensive problems. After Saturday's defeat, San Jose is on pace to finish the season with 86 goals and break the previous record of 75 goals allowed by FC Cincinnati in 2019 in the expansion season.

Even if the Quakes improve significantly over the back half of the table and allow just 26 goals over their last 17 games, they will still be the only team to record three of the 10 worst seasons in MLS history in terms of total goals. conceded, with all three of those campaigns since 2018. They're already one of only three teams on the list twice. The other two have the excuse that one of those seasons was an expansion year.

All of this doesn't even include the pandemic-shortened 2020 league campaign, in which San Jose allowed a league-leading 51 goals in 23 games. It's a smaller sample size for sure. But it's also the second-worst defensive season in terms of goals allowed per game in MLS history.

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In other words, the Quakes finished at least last in the Western Conference in goals allowed in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and they're on track to do so again in 2024.

There are some mitigating factors to consider in Saturday's performance – namely the loss of defensive midfielder Carlos Gruizo to international duty and the absence of two centre-backs. But those alone do not explain why the same problem for a top-flight professional team has become so evident and so consistent, with well below average investment in defense and goalkeeping for so long.

The most puzzling part is that, unlike the other four major men's professional sports in North America, there is no discernible future competitive benefit to tanking. The MLS SuperDraft is merely a supplementary mechanism for talent acquisition, and is far less important than what teams do through their academies and the international market. These last two arenas will not benefit in the future from a faltering team at the present time.

All of this comes in the face of growing noise from American soccer fans who refuse to follow Major League Soccer due to the perceived superiority of the sport in other countries around the world, where ups and downs are the norm and teams like San Jose were going to face a very real relegation. Fights regularly.

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There are real and credible reasons why MLS remains a closed system. The biggest is that the facilities gap between MLS and the levels of the professional game below it is much greater than is found in most other leagues of similar level. The facilities have long been seen as an important part of the game's stability in a country that, despite its growth, may never become the most popular sport.

But if MLS really wants to avoid the promotion and relegation debate, it needs to take a stronger arm towards clubs that clearly seem to bask in the reality that there are few real consequences for being bad. Because it's impossible to justify San Jose's status as an MLS club right now, when the problem that has plagued it has been so consistent, unchanging and fundamental to the sport.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianquillen/2024/06/16/the-san-jose-earthquakes-defensive-embarassment-is-an-mls-problem/ The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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