San Jose Earthquakes are hoping for a strong start to the Major League Soccer season

San Jose Earthquakes opened the 2021 Major League Soccer season on Friday with a kind of optimism often brought by new beginnings – even when prevailing wisdom suggests otherwise.

San Jose starts in Houston in a two-team match with low expectations, based on the predictions of several sportsbooks before the start of the season. Quakes and Dynamo had a slim chance of winning the MLS Cup title this year.

Probability maker’s ratings did not deter GT Marcinkowski, who would open the season as the COEX goalkeeper after playing last month with the US U-23 team that failed to qualify for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

“If we’re one thing, we like to be vulnerable,” Marcinkowski said in a video call with reporters this week. “We love when people count us. We take pride in that and we want to prove people wrong but we also want to prove ourselves correct.”

Coach Matthias Almeida starts his third season with a fresh look in some key positions but with the same focus on building team unity above all else.

“This does not guarantee that we will win,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “It guarantees that they will respect and love each other as a group.”

Almeida, 47, tried to prepare for earthquakes for an eight-month season while dealing with the loss of his father, who died last month in Argentina. Reports from Latin America have stated that Oscar Almeida has died of COVID-19.

Matthias Almeida said he has not seen his father in over a year due to travel restrictions during the global pandemic.

Speaking publicly of the death for the first time, he said, “losing my father was the hardest and most painful thing I have ever lived in my life.”

Almeida added, “My father and my mother gave me values ​​that I feel are missing in the world today.” They taught me to be humble. They taught me to love what I do. They taught me to respect others. They taught me how to be human.

These values ​​are an extension of what Almedya has tried to instill in earthquakes.

Almeda enters the season with crew changes that it hopes will suffice to prove the odds-makers wrong. The biggest move was to sign Mexican Javier “Chovis” Lopez to replace Magnus Erickson as an attacking midfielder for COEX.

“We are a team that doesn’t sign players for a lot of money,” Almeida said. “Our contracts were on loan with players I knew and coached.”

Lopez played, on a one-year loan deal, for Almeida in Chivas de Guadalajara in the Mexican League.

Quakes has two high priced gamer sites available. But the team has not taken a big step, and may wait until the summer transfer window opens to sign the players he targeted. General manager Jesse Fioranelli rarely discusses his personal strategy until after getting a player.

In the past three years, Almeida and Furanelli have recruited seven players from Latin America to help cultivate the coach’s philosophy about how to play football.

Almeida said he hopes his beliefs will affect everyone from the youth to the older players. He brought the Quakes Under-23 Academy team to pre-season camp in Santa Barbara this year to help spread his gospel.

Marcinkowski, a native of the Alamo, seemed a true believer: “In our locker room, we know we can play with anyone, and we can beat anyone. There is confidence in our team and I don’t think it’s a mistake.”

Confidence in earthquakes has often dwindled and dwindled as they played the last two seasons under Almeida.

In 2019, they lose their first four matches before bouncing mid-season and then collapsing at the end.

Last year, San Jose failed to win at home in their first two games before MLS officials temporarily suspended play as the coronavirus outbreak escalated. Although they qualified to the playoffs as the last team in the Western Conference, Quakes also gave up 51 goals bleak that did not inspire confidence in their play.

Almeida wants to see a stronger start this year. After playing for Houston, San Jose is back for five of its next six matches.

Another bad start could derail efforts to return to the playoffs.

When asked where he hopes to see improvement this year, Almeida said that boils down to playing steadfast.

He said about the 2020 season: “We went through bad moments, we went through normal moments and we had good moments.”

The team’s rollercoaster ride through MLS epitomizes what most people in the world endured during the worst pandemic in a century. Marcinkowski, who has captained goal in his last 11 games, has shaped his feelings about next season with the health crisis in mind.

“Going back to last year, we didn’t all know where the world would be in 365 days and now, it’s clear that we’re in a completely different place; our team, me, everyone.”

Marcinkowski said earthquakes plan to use the coronavirus pandemic as a driving force for success on the football field.

But the COVID-19 restrictions have also limited a lot of pre-season training, which means mixing new arrivals may take some time. Almeida does not expect a well-prepared team at the starting gate.

“We won’t be able to see everything we want in these first matches,” he said.

With this fact in mind, Quakes will have to learn to play together quickly – and quickly – to avoid a third season in a row with a negative start. Fortunately for them, 26 other Major League Soccer teams are starting a season in case the pandemic spreads, too.

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