Backpass: 'We like (H/h)olding the high line'
Backpass: 'We like (H/h)olding the high line'
Red went to Miami last week; Rabbi headed to San Jose this week. Hey, would you rather see Lionel Messi or Jeremy Ebobisse? Obviously it's Ebobisse.
“I’m a vibes guy” says Phil Leyva, the Quakes Epicenter co-host tells me as we chat in the press box pre-game while I wolf down a pair of veggie sandwiches with spicy hummus after a long, cold walk from the distant commuter train to Paypal Park for Saturday evening’s Quakes-Rapids match. “Yeah, me too,” I say through a grin, knowing exactly what he means but not knowing exactly what he means because, of course, that’s what being a vibes guy is.
What I mean when I say it is that even back in the day if my most important role was hypothetically to write a 300-word summary of a match - the goals, yellow cards, shifts in the balance of a match or exceptional saves - I always thought my real purpose in writing and podcasting about the Rapids had to be something more than ‘that new guy kicked the ball and it went in the goal and we collected 3 points and the fans were happy.’ Because you can see that on a tv screen, and also because it is only a small part of what brings us out to a football match. So, of course, this is going to be a ‘vibes’ post about going away to see the Rapids in San Jose, but an ebullient one, because of course a Colorado squad that all of us thought was ‘really hoping to scrape into the playoffs’ has improbably reeled in 7 points in three games - against LAFC, Inter Miami, and the Quakes.
There are no ‘easy’ points in MLS. No matter how bad the Quakes turn out to be this season - and at 1-0-7 (WTL) this season, they are quite bad - going away to face a team whose player pedigree and salary cap spend is nearly identical to your own is going to be a tough scrap. Chris Armas’ men made it a little easier for themselves by creating a fantastic goal early in the match via high pressing. But more on that in a moment.
I was in San Francisco for a week’s vacation to celebrate a friends 70th birthday. Looking at the schedule my wife had concocted, there wasn’t really a reason NOT to go to San Jose for a soccer match, except that it was far, and inconvenient1, and that I’m still on East Coast time and so being at Paypal Park until 11:30 pm is really like being there until 2:30am. But a life lived with too many ‘shoulda-woulda-couldas’ is decidedly not ‘vibes’. If I was a completionist2, attempting to tick all the MLS stadia off my bucket list, skipping San Jose when I was within striking distance because ‘it’s far and I’m tired’ would be really dumb. That said, the trip is annoyingly inconvenient enough that if San Jose were playing any team other than the Rapids, I likely would have not made the trek.
Taking Amtrak down from Berkeley, one arrives to the station platform in Santa Clara (no I didn’t know till yesterday that San Jose actually plays in Santa Clara) and walks down an empty road flanked by a huge vacant lot and some industrial parks, then along a long road of mega-box apartments under construction. A right turn puts you on a six lane suburbans speedway hard by the San Jose Airport and the swanky offices of Byte Dance and Roku, where you can peer through the lightly tinted glass to see the kombucha taps and foosball tables and selfie-friendly interiors of the kind of massive venture capital and IPO-heavy tech companies that have made Silicon Valley America’s new darling. Byte Dance, you’ve read about - they are the Chinese company that owns TikTok, and if they can’t unhook their domestic business from the prying eyes of China, Congress and the Biden administration are going to nuke their platform and make your teen daughter bawl her eyes out. Or just switch to Instagram, which is the same thing, only Mark Zuckerberg will be able to mine your data instead of Shi Zinping. Whatever.
When you get close enough to the stadium, though, there are a half-dozen vendors selling bacon-wrapped hotdogs on rickety carts, and they smell delicious.3
All this goes to say that Paypal Park is lovely, but it is surrounded by nothing and connected to nothing. The stadium is new - built in 2015 as Avaya Stadium but then renamed to Paypal when Avaya went bankrupt in 2017. With suites pitchside on the east and west and a high-raked supporters side in the north curva4, it has the feel of a newer, sleeker Liga MX stadium. Food is under the stands, and a modestly sized press box and is high atop the east side, similar to the setup at FC Cincinnati. At LAFC and FCC and Columbus, players exit the pitch past a luxury bar where the high paying suite crowd, sipping $28 Old Fashioned and overpriced soggy french fries can ogle Cucho Hernandez or Dennis Bouanga. Here in San Jose, a small pedestrian bridge guarantees that that the unwashed masses get to see, but only from 8 feet overhead, their clip-cloping be-cleated heroes. It’s cool because a crush of Latino and white kids after the game send up a cheer every time a Quakes player goes by, and better than Monty McBanker the extractive capitalist having exclusive access to the club, but also in tech-heavy San Jose, it feels like both a low rent solution and a missed opportunity. I will say that a huge percentage of the fans I encountered with were Latino families, with the kids still wearing their kits or windbreakers from an afternoon game for their club team. So perhaps Paypal is pretty spot-on with their balance: suites for the 1%, a family friendly, affordable5, clean and straight-forward stadium for the rest of us.
On the south lawn the stadium has food trucks and a setup for cornhole and kids having a kickaround. There’s a lot of parking and a small pregame tailgating community. If you are a Rapids fan and you’re thinking - ‘stadium a little remote from anything; quaint but lacking amenities; everybody drives except the rabbi because its not transit-friendly: this sounds a lot like DSGP’ - yes, yes.
One more similarity is the smallish supporters section. The section is plenty big - there’s a safe stand that stretches thirty or more rows up to the top of the north side for the Quakes Ultras. But there’s only a very hearty band of sixty or so banging drums and making noise on a chilly and damp Santa Clara night. San Jose hasn’t won MLS Cup since 2003, and hasn’t (link western conference preview) been particularly threatening in the Western Conference since Landon Donovan left. It’s hard to build and grow a supporters section in the face of more than two decades of footballing futility, so I sympathize. Chatting with the Quakes press during and after the game, there’s a sense that they have the same ‘vibes’ as Rapids media, which is ‘it’d be great to squeak into the playoffs - but please God let’s at least not embarass ourselves.’ The Quakes post-game show I make a guest appearance on is beginning to ask the question ‘maybe it’s time to fire Luchi Gonzalez’. Being just one season removed from those same conversations, I empathize with them.
The vibes are definitely on for the Colorado Rapids, though. The night in Santa Clara was, despite some strong shot attempts by San Jose, a complete victory for the Rapids. Their first goal, at 8’, came after Djordje Mihailovic, Calvin Harris, and Cole Bassett high pressed San Jose’s Tanner Beason and Paul Marie in the left corner. Marie gave it away to Mihailovic; Mihailovic instantly swiveled and threaded a heads-up pass to Rafael Navarro in the box, and former Rapids starting keeper William Yarbrough chopped down the ‘Pids forward to give up a PK, which Rafa6 converted.
I asked Rapids Head Coach Chris Armas about how this reflected the team’s pressing philosophy, Armas; but first, I identified my outlet as ‘Holding the High Line.’ Armas responded “‘Holding the High Line’, that’s the…? We like Holding the High Line.” Or maybe more accurately he said ‘we like holding the high line.’ Whether his comment was in regards to his podcast preferences or his tactical proclivities, we’ll never know. For now, let’s just say its both.
Chasing the game 1-0, San Jose were forced to overcommit men forward to even the score, giving Colorado opportunities to break and score quickly with numerical advantage, which gave Navarro another goal at 60’ on an assist from Cole Bassett. Bassett added a third goal - a low slotted bullet from the right side into the far post in the 80th - to seal the deal.
That doesn’t mean the Rapids dominated the game at all. San Jose won on possession, 61-39, but you’d expect that for a team that trailed at home from the 8th minute onward, as the Rapids new they could default to defend a little deeper and concede the ball in hopes of sneaking out of the Bay Area with a 1-0 win. San Jose spent a lot of time getting into dangerous places and getting shots, as the black and blue produced 24 shorts. However, the shooting boots were ice cold for the Quakes: only 6 shots were on target. Another three hit the woodwork – and I think all three toinked the crossbar just over the outstretched arm of Zack Steffen. More than a few times - Amahl Pellegrino at 21’, Jackson Yueill at 29’, Pellegrino again at 39’ - SJ players had a clear look at goal and the man on the ball just skied the ball harmlessly into the crowd or wide into the front row.
In the second half, Zack Steffen was pressed into a few tough stops; at 48’ against Carlos Akapo and again from Alfredo Morales’ rebound, and at 69’ against Jack Skahan There’s a world where this game ends 3-3. Steffen’s clean sheet won’t go down as the toughest he’s picked up, but it was definitely earned.
Through eight games, Colorado sits a surprising 5th in the Western Conference table, and they’ll play a Dallas team at home this week that have started an underwhelming 1-2-4 (WTL) so far. I asked Zack Steffen in the postgame scrum - ‘scrum’ being four Rapids comms and video staff and me - about how he felt about the team’s momentum at this stage of things. He deflected (imagine that, a goalkeeper deflecting) and said something about it being a great group of guys and that it’s a long season. I stand by my question as half the answer: the Rapids have the momentum, and the vibes.
My night ended with a late-night appearance on ‘The Aftershock’, Quakes Epicenter’s cleverly named postgame show. I tried to be magnanimous and complimentary of my hosts and their team, considering all the facts. Afterwards, still buzzing a little from adrenyline, I doubled timed it back to a chain-motel by the train station to catch six hours sleep before the ride back north.
Seeing old friends around the Bay Area and returning to old haunts was only equalled by partaking of a Rapids road victory in a season that is shaping up to be a good ‘un. Vibes, indeed.
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Bonus material: Some Choice Chris Armas Quotes (because I transcribed it, and I don’t want to delete it because I haven’t done a live postgame with a Rapids player or coach in five years. Really.)
‘We come with real focus on the road.’
‘Tonight was a real team performance, and a really mature performance from a relatively young group.’
‘Holding the High Line, thats the…? We like Holding the High Line.’ (or maybe better it was ‘we like holding the high line.’)
‘For sure, how can we create chances using the high press moments, aggressive moments in a compact shape, and counterpressing in a moment to create goals.’
‘It’s not just something that’s technical and tactical; there’s also a psychological piece to pressing, that the first guy on the scene might not get any reward for it but its nice to see us get one of those.’
The ride down from Berkeley was great. Unfortunately, due to weekend construction on the Caltrain line to electrify it, the train back to SF the next day was four stops on a train and then a terrible, bumpy, cold bus ride. But still - worth it.
I do think eating a sketchy cart-dog comes with a 50-50 chance of food poisoning. Worth it? Probably. And also, we got mild food poisoning at Fisherman’s Wharf on Friday, so whatever. Live on the edge, I say.
There are also supporters on a small south stand. To me diffusing, your already smallish supporters section’s impact is a poor decision.
Tickets run from $30 for the two supporters areas to $81 for good midfield seats. Pitchside box seats come in closer to $180-250 a piece. Parking is $32 right by the stadium (yikes!), but you can park further away for cheaper. All in, a family of four likely has to shell out about $300 for decent seats, parking, and food, which seems about right to me, honestly.
Armas called him ‘Rafa’ with an R. So I’m gonna start using R’s occasionally with his name.
Nice write-up Mark. On footnote 5, from what I’ve seen Armas seems to use the American pronunciation of the player’s names a lot. Djordje corrected us in Miami when we were calling him to come over to us. We were saying it the way Armas does: “Georgie” lol
Good write up, Mark. I meant to read it earlier. Also enjoyed the pod about it.