What has led to San Jose Earthquakes’ resurgent start in 2023?

SAN JOSE – PayPal Park has never hosted a playoff game since it opened in 2015. That may change this year.

Three months into the season, the San Jose Earthquakes (6-5-5) are fifth in the Western Conference as they prepare to host reigning Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

The Quakes have already beaten two of the teams ahead of them, winning at second place Seattle and splitting two hard-fought games against third place (and defending MLS champion) LAFC. They are only three points behind Dallas, who they tied on May 27.

The top seven seeds are guaranteed to host at least one game in the best-of-three first round. The Quakes, who are four points clear of eighth place, haven’t hosted a playoff game since 2012, when they were still playing at Buck Shaw Stadium on Santa Clara’s campus.

The turnaround comes thanks to renewed investment in the club, which has three designated players for the first time, and the arrival of first-year coach Luchi Gonzalez, who made the playoffs twice in three seasons at his previous coaching stint with FC Dallas.

Gonzalez actually spent his rookie season with the Quakes in 2002, sandwiched between the team’s 2001 and 2003 MLS championships.

He didn’t contribute much on the field, but he had an up-close look at what it took to win in the league – a combination of talents like Landon Donovan, veteran defenders like Jeff Agoos, and the right mix of role players and competitors.

This year’s team features MVP candidate Cristian Espinoza (eight goals, five assists), centerback Jonathan Mensah (Columbus’s captain when it was the 2020 MLS champions), and a strong supporting cast, which sparked Gonzalez’s interest in the club.

“There were a lot of technical, talented, creative players,” Gonzalez said. “And I think their creativity and technique and their intensity gave me the confidence to have a vision with them and align it with them so they could reach their potential.”

Gonzalez said that mentality and spirit are particularly crucial in a league like MLS, where the salary cap system makes it so that most teams are relatively even in terms of talent.

Because the league encompasses such a large area, making for longer flights and extreme variations in weather conditions, winning on the road is also more challenging, which also leads to more parody. In fact, Columbus lost all six road games during its COVID-shortened 2020 championship season.

But the Quakes were tied at LAFC (5-0-1 at home) until a PK in the 95th minute, which Gonzales saw as a sign that the team has bought into his system, which values goal-scoring opportunities more than possession.

“There’s not many teams who can go toe-to-toe with LAFC at their place, and we did that,” Gonzalez said.  “There’s not many teams who can take the ball away from them and attack them, and have the structure and the organization and the confidence and the courage. That tells me we have a team that can compete. We can beat anyone.”

Still, the Quakes are also just five points from 10th-place Houston, which is currently out of the playoffs, and has just one point in two games against the bottom two teams, LA Galaxy and Colorado.

It needs to find more attacking options besides Espinosa and Jeremy Ebobisse (six goals) – no other Quake has scored more than once. That includes unlocking phenom Cade Cowell, who just scored three goals in four games for the U.S. in the Under-20 World Cup but hasn’t scored in 11 starts with San Jose this season.