Unable to connect on passes through the midfield most of the night, the Earthquakes playoff run ended tonight with a 3-0 loss at Kansas City; San Jose lost the home and home round by a 3-2 aggregate score. Sad result for us fans, still not knowing who will control the franchise next season or if it will even continue in the South Bay. Almost certainly this was Landon Donovan’s last game wearing our shirt as Bayern Leverkusen, the German club that owns his rights (and has loaned him to MLS the last three years), needs his proven ability to control the ball to push them into the top four in the Bundesliga and possibly Champions League as well.
Referee Terry Vaughn made a number of questionable calls. Not the least of which was the non-issuance of a yellow card to Wizard midfielder Kerry Zavagnin in the 42nd minute that so outraged Donovan that our star screamed enough at Vaughn to get himself shown the yellow instead. All Zavagnin, LD’s USA teammate, did was nearly rip his jersey off to prevent him from getting free in the offensive zone.
In the end I go back to bad passing as the core reason for the loss. All night the ball was not hit properly–I’m talking to you Richard Mulrooney, Brian Mullan, Ramiro Corrales and Todd Dunivant–allowing the Kansas City players to disrupt nearly every forward move. Their three goals were mostly the fair reward to well-struck balls though the second was a gift from bad defending by Brian Ching.
Next year? One can only wonder about the fate of our Quakes.
BillSaysThis 