Photo by ISIphotos.com
BY DYLAN BUTLER
Desperate for a win and needing to jump start an anemic attack, the New York Red Bulls found the perfect elixir on Friday night -- the woeful San Jose Earthquakes. As it turned out, the Red Bulls' 4-1 victory was the perfect storm. New York was facing an injury-riddled Quakes team with one win in seven games in the first of four consecutive home games.
What followed next was shocking. A Red Bulls team that scored a league-low five goals in 720 minutes scorched the net four times in 40 minutes. Jorge Rojas scored his first two MLS goals inside of 20 minutes. Juan Pablo Angel added a third in the 22nd minute and Mac Kandji made it 4-0 five minutes from halftime.
"Today was the game we were expecting to have a long time ago," Angel said. "Everything came together today, especially in the first half. I think the first half was a different class in terms of the way we played, how we closed them down, we denied them the space, we denied them the ball. And we scored the goals that gave us the cushion for the second half to keep hanging in there."
Mac Kandji abused Nick Garcia on the flank with his pace and the Quakes twice fell asleep at the back post, giving Rojas and Angel sitters. Even on the first goal, which Rojas meant to be a service into the box, defender Kevin Goldthwaite was open in the box. While he missed a header, Goldthwaite forced Quakes goalkeeper Joe Cannon into a difficult decision, allowing Rojas' attempted pass to sneak inside the far post.
"I think Jorge had been knocking on the door for quite a while," Juan Carlos Osorio said. "I remember his shots from distance against D.C. There were times in the preseason when he was our best player. I think when he plays farther up the pitch, he is very good to us and I am very pleased to see Jorge scoring and playing today."
A picturesque first half, though, was tainted for Osorio when Ryan Johnson headed the ball past Danny Cepero in the dying seconds of the half.
"I was disappointed in the way we played the last five minutes of the first half," he said. "I let the players know that I thought it was too casual for my liking."
While Osorio saw his team give away five points late in games this season, Johnson's goal realistically was just cosmetic.
"The game was over basically in the first 20 minutes," Quakes coach Frank Yallop said.
So where do these two teams, who each had one league win coming into the match, go from here? With a suddenly potent attack and some newfound confidence, the Red Bulls resume a four-game homestand against a Houston team next Saturday that is brutal on the turf. That is followed by a Sunday afternoon tilt against Chicago on May 24 and closed out with a match against the Colorado Rapids. All of a sudden, 10 out of a possible 12 points isn't so daunting.
"We'll see," Angel said. "It's been a lot of ups and downs this year. We still believe when we keep the lead, we have a much better team than the one we are showing. We think we have more class, and I think today was a very good game in general."
The Quakes, meanwhile, limp back to San Jose and will attempt to crawl out of the bottom of the Western Conference -- well, thanks to hopeless FC Dallas -- San Jose isn't the worst team out West. But they have 15 days to lick their wounds and search for answers before their next league game.
"It was a crap game," Cannon said. "Our staff, our organization and our fans deserve better, and at some point in the season we're going to give it to them."
