It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled is here to dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. Let’s get right to it.
Winner: Addition by subtraction in San Jose
When Chicho Arango, Josef Martinez, and Cristian Espinoza all left San Jose over the offseason, I’ll admit, I had questions. In those three, the Quakes lost 44 goal contributions. Put another way, no MLS team lost a trio with that much attacking firepower over the offseason. Really, the only other club that came close is the Philadelphia Union, who saw 42 goal contributions leave in their Tai Baribo, Mikael Uhre, Kai Wagner trio. We, uh, know how that’s going for the Union.
But in San Jose, we haven’t seen regression after parting ways (intentionally in the case of Arango and Martinez and unintentionally in the case of Espinoza) with those three attacking stars. Instead, we’ve seen improvement.
With four wins in this season’s first five games following a 1-0 road victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday, the Earthquakes are flying. Their xG differential has ballooned from +0.29 per game last year to a staggering +1.10 per game this year, as per American Soccer Analysis. Of course, there’s a small sample size caveat. There’s also a strength of schedule caveat, with wins coming over Sporting Kansas City, Atlanta United, the Philadelphia Union, and a partially rotated ‘Caps team.
Still, how many teams have turned up in Vancouver and limited any version of the Whitecaps? On Saturday, the ‘Caps tallied their fourth-lowest single-game xG tally in a regular season game since Jesper Sorensen showed up.
The biggest piece of San Jose’s improvement comes on the defensive end. With the attack first, ask questions about defending later duo of Arango and Martinez leading the line for big stretches of last year, I noted ahead of the season that the Earthquakes’ defense has “literally nowhere to go but up”. Earlier in the year, Bruce Arena came out and said darn near the same thing:
“Well that’s been a big difference this year from last year [when] we didn’t get a collective effort all the time and I think we’re better at that this year and hopefully we can continue as the season goes on.”
With committed defending from Preston Judd and Niko Tsakiris at the top of a 4-4-2 shape, the Quakes are observably better without the ball this year.
It’s not just a change in personnel, though, that’s seen San Jose improve defensively – it’s also that Arena has set his line of confrontation a little deeper. Despite sticking with a high-pressing system for much of his first year in San Jose, the veteran manager struggled to drill that system to the point where even when the goal-first front two had their assignments right in the press, the structure still buckled in midfield. Presented without comment from the Quakes’ 2025 trip to Vancouver:
— _ (@21LBRB) March 22, 2026
This year, San Jose are showing off more compact, cohesive defending this year than last. See for yourself in this side-by-side:
