SAN JOSE, Calif. – In more than 70 minutes spent with a small media group on Monday, San Jose Earthquakes general manager Jesse Fioranelli and coach Chris Leitch talked about finding “the core” of their club, but wouldn’t go into specifics regarding which players comprise that list.
There’s a good bet, though, that you can guess one name.
Even though he’ll be 35 by the time the 2018 MLS regular season kicks off – an age where most players are winding down, if not outright retired – Chris Wondolowski remains the face of the Quakes. And in the wake of a season that featured 13 goals and eight assists – numbers that still put him amongst MLS’s top 20 players in terms of combined output – San Jose will once again be building around a man who hasn’t been held to single digits, in terms of goals, since the turn of this decade.
“If you put that into perspective, he still has a lot of gas in his tank,” Fioranelli said of Wondolowski’s combined goal and assist total, which ranks second in his career, trailing only his record-setting 2012 campaign.
In fact, Wondolowski’s eight assists were a team best this year and set a career high for the Quakes’ captain. The last one, a square pass to Marco Ureña in stoppage time of San Jose’s regular-season finale, led to the goal that put the Quakes back in the playoffs for the first time in five years – and it perhaps served as a sign of how San Jose can make their talisman’s job a little easier.
Ureña’s tally was his fifth of the season, a mark matched by fellow newcomers Danny Hoesen and Valeri ‘Vako’ Qazaishvili (who did it in just 784 minutes after arriving midway through the year). It was the first time the Quakes had a quartet of five-goal scorers since 2012, which speaks to the load Wondolowski has had to carry through his eight consecutive seasons of reaching double digits.
“Our goal, which is a help to Chris, is to put more players on the field that can carry weight,” Fioranelli said. “He wants that, and we want that. It’s not for me to judge, but I believe there are more players carrying weight, on every line, which we can be excited about, that make it easier for every player to express themselves better.”
Wondolowski has said, consistently and repeatedly, that he won’t retire until coming out to training ceases to be fun. Given the broad smile he flashed around the locker room in the wake of that postseason-clinching win, it’s hard to imagine that point coming any time soon.
Leitch and his predecessor, Dominic Kinnear, combined to give Wondolowski the most MLS playing time of his career. Wondolowski started every league match for San Jose and clocked 3,041 minutes – the third-highest total of any MLS field player.
Partially that’s because he had dropped somewhat off the US national team radar, and didn’t miss time during the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup. But it also speaks to his near indestructibility.
Still: How long can a 35-year-old continue to be an every-week player?
“When is that time coming? Anyone who says they know that 100 percent is just speculating,” Leitch said. “I’ll say this: He’s never missed a training session, nor does he ever want to be out of a training session. He never wants to be out of the lineup.
“Does he show signs of slowing down? No.”
There’s an added twist, of course: By tying Jeff Cunningham for the No. 2 spot on the all-time list at 134 league goals, Wondolowski has put himself just 12 goals away from passing Landon Donovan as MLS’s scoring king.
As a point of reference, Wondolowski has reached the 12-goal mark in seven of the last eight years.
“I would say there’s not one teammate, not one fan who would question what this guy wants to achieve within this club,” Leitch said. “And he doesn’t do it from an individual perspective and goals and records, he does it from a team-first or team-centric perspective. He has, and I think will always, give everything he has for the cause – and along the way will potentially be one of the most decorated soccer players ever to play in this league.”
