Playing against Sporting KC in the MLS Western Conference play-in game on Wednesday night in Kansas City, the Quakes failed to score a goal and ended up tied after 90 minutes.

But there was no extra time to be played; the play-in games are designed to go straight to penalty kicks. And Sporting KC featured a goalie, Tim Melia, who entered the game with the highest PK save percentage (42%) in MLS history.

The Quakes struggled to score from the spot as they lost to KC, 4-2, in penalty kicks to see their upstart season come to an end.

“I like how we grew into the game,” said first-year coach Luchi Gonzalez. “If we were in extra time, I have no doubt we could’ve had a good effort to win it there if there were no PKs.”

Having finished their season with four straight draws and only one win in their last 11 games, this was exactly the result the Earthquakes must’ve feared.

The Quakes’ conservative, defensive-minded approach is what allowed them to bounce back from a last-place finish a year ago to earn the nine-seed under a new head coach. But when pressed with a must-win game in which they needed to get numbers up the field and push the ball forward, the Quakes struggled to get anything going.

And instead of moving on to a best-of-three series that would’ve guaranteed them their first home playoff game since 2012, and first in the history of PayPal Park, the Earthquakes will watch the rest of the postseason from home.

They weren’t expected to win this game, it should be said. They entered as three-to-one underdogs against a KC team that had finished the year with six wins in its last nine games after starting the season without any wins in its first 10.

Featuring a starting lineup stacked with players who consistently show a quality first touch, and a coach, Peter Vermes, who has been at the helm since 2009, Sporting KC looked like a team that would be tough to break down.

San Jose’s cautious approach, in which they defend with numbers and look for opportunities on the counter attack, offered them little in the first half, when they hardly sniffed any chances at goal.

Their best player all year, Cristian Espinoza was harassed all night and struggled to get any looks at goal. He did create one brilliant chance for Carlos Gruezo with a smooth pass right on the ground towards the penalty spot, but Gruezo shanked it early in the second half.

The bright spot of the game for San Jose was 20-year-old budding talent Cade Cowell, who struggled in the club’s final regular season game against Austin FC and started this game on the bench. But Gonzalez subbed him in for Mathew Hoppe in the 56th minute and Cowell looked dangerous every time he touched the ball.

He nearly scored on a brilliant individual effort when he outran three defenders from the left side of the box through the right side, but he waited a hair too long to capitalize and his shot was deflected wide.

“Cade came in with fantastic energy and confidence,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a great game for him where we’re trying to defend in lower blocks and create space behind and in isolation. He almost scored a great goal driving across the box.”

Other than Cowell, the Quakes didn’t have many players who looked dangerous in this one.

They spent most of the game putting numbers behind the ball on the defensive side. They were out-possessed, 60-40, and outshot, 18-5. They finished the game without a shot on goal.

Gonzalez felt like his guys could’ve had more chances if they took advantage of opportunities to cross the ball into dangerous areas, but the scoring chances rarely materialized.

“I’m proud of the execution and intention,” Gonzalez said. “We can’t control the outcome and the result. We can focus on what we can control. Our attitudes were excellent. We were aggressive. We were willing to work to get behind the ball. First half we had six or seven possessions in or around their box with the ability to cross the ball and with numbers. And we didn’t execute.”

In penalty kicks, Johnny Russell buried his effort to put KC up 1-0, but Espinoza’s first shot was parried by Melia, who made a diving stop to set the tone in the PK shootout.

San Jose captain Jackson Yueill skied the Earthquakes’ second attempt way over the goal and they couldn’t recover.

Melia is “a good keeper on PKs,” said Earthquakes forward Jack Skahan, who converted his opportunity but it was too late to save his squad. “PK shootouts, it’s kind of a crapshoot. It’s tough. The conversation is to be confident, go up there with confidence, try to bury it. Bring energy. And I think we did that. PKs are just a tough way to end the game.”

Call it the Jimmy Conrad Derby.

The former United States Men’s National Team captain began his MLS career in San Jose and won an MLS Cup with the Earthquakes in 2001 before he was traded to KC. He said he’ll be watching Wednesday’s game like a “mom who just wants both teams to have fun.”

The Earthquakes infamously dealt Conrad to Kansas City for a second-round draft pick after the 2002 season. It was in KC that Conrad became an MLS legend, being named to the All-Star team six times, earning four MLS Best XI selections and being named the 2005 MLS Defender of the Year.

Today, Conrad calls the Bay Area home. He’s the technical director and an assistant coach for the San Francisco Glens, a minor league soccer team, and he’s a friend of Earthquakes head coach Luchi Gonzalez. The two played together briefly in San Jose more than 20 years ago.

But when it comes to which side Conrad favors, he’s a bit nervous to say that Kansas City has his heart.

“My time in San Jose was awesome,” he said by phone this week. “Then I got traded away. I never saw it coming. I don’t hold it against them. But when I went to KC I blossomed. I accomplished so much when I was there. I’m in their Hall of Fame. If you go to their stadium, my name is up there. As much as I love what San Jose has done for me as a player and my continued relationship now, I still have a lot of tethered to my time in KC. I have to say KC is my club.”

Still, Conrad said he’s been impressed with how quickly the Quakes bounced back from being the worst team in the Western Conference last year to making a playoff appearance this season, Gonzalez’s first as the head coach.

“Having been on the Quakes when Luchi got drafted to us, there was something about him,” Conrad said. “He was a student of the game. The details mattered to him. I really appreciate that about him then and I probably appreciate it even more now that he’s the coach. You can see his personality on the team. There’s a sense of care and a warmth to him. Luchi is a special human being.”

The Quakes will have their hands full going up against KC on Wednesday night. San Jose won an early-season matchup, 3-0, back in April, then KC got revenge with a 3-0 win at home in August.

KC is entering Wednesday’s game as one of the hottest teams in MLS, having won six of its last nine contests.

“Kansas City has done really well, and we recognize that,” Gonzalez said Tuesday. “Probably the perception and the expectation out there is that because we’re not home and they are, and with their form and their talent, that we aren’t supposed to get through. We’ll embrace that. It’ll drive our motivation and mentality.”

Gonzalez’s club hasn’t won a game since Sept. 16, having tied in four consecutive matchups to squeeze into the playoffs as the No. 9 and final seed.

“With four consecutive ties it proves that they have some resilience to them, they know how to stay in games,” Conrad said. “If they’re not playing well they can still grind out results. But can they take their chances when they come? There’s something to be said that they haven’t been beaten in a little while. You need that. You need to be tough.”

In their most recent appearance in the MLS Playoffs in 2020, the Quakes also played against KC and lost in penalty kicks, 3-0.

Wednesday night, there will be no extra time. If the game is tied after 90 minutes, it goes straight to PKs.

“That first goal is so important,” said Conrad. “If they can go get that first goal that really changes KC’s approach and I wonder what that looks like. You have to punch them first.”

The winning team will move on to play against the top-seeded St. Louis City FC in a best-of-three series that begins on Sunday in St. Louis. Either San Jose or Kansas City will host the second game of the series. The Quakes haven’t hosted a playoff game since 2012 and have never hosted a playoff game at PayPal Park.

They finished their regular season 10-14-10. Argentinian winger Cristian Espinoza led the squad with 13 goals and 13 assists, participating in 67% of the team’s goals, tied for highest in MLS this season and the highest percentage in club history.

Sporting KC, which began the year without a win in its first 10 matches, finished the season 12-8-14. They’re led by Mexican forward Alan Pulido, who has a career-high 14 goals in 28 games.

The game can be streamed globally on MLS Season Pass via Apple TV or be heard on local radio via 810 AM (English) and 1370 KZSF (Spanish).

The Quakes will also be hosting a watch party at Old Wagon Saloon in San Pedro Square.

But for the sellout crowd at PayPal Park, the announcement shortly after the game was enough to send the stadium into a celebration.

By finishing their regular season with a 1-1 draw against Austin FC, the Earthquakes punched their ticket to the MLS playoffs for the first time since 2020 and just the third time in the last 11 seasons.

“We have mixed emotions,” said first-year head coach Luchi Gonzalez. “Being over the line is a great validation… But we’re actually quite disappointed. We had 20-plus shots, seven on frame and I thought we were unlucky not to score the winning goal.”

It was just last August that Gonzalez, the former United States Men’s National Team assistant, took the job as the Earthquakes head coach, inheriting a last-place team that needed a cultural makeover, and made this proclamation: “We must make the playoffs next year.”

Behind his defensive-minded approach, the Earthquakes turned themselves from a team that conceded the most goals in the Western Conference to a team that conceded the fourth-least. And while they struggled to close out games down the stretch, they finished with four consecutive draws to finish their season with just enough points (44) to squeak in as the No. 9 and final seed.

“There’s no champagne in that locker room because we have more ambition,” Gonzalez said.

Had they won on Saturday, the Earthquakes would’ve guaranteed that they’d be hosting the play-in game against Sporting KC, which will take place Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. PT. But by settling for a draw, they’ll now have to go on the road to play a KC team that has been on fire, winning seven of its last nine games, including a must-win against Minnesota on Saturday.

“This is a league where there are always upsets in the playoffs, there are away teams beating home teams,” Gonzalez said. “Do we want to be one of those teams? Why not San Jose? I dare anybody to take us lightly because we can keep going.”

The Earthquakes were unquestionably the better team against Austin.

They came out flying in the early going, creating several chances until they converted a beauty in the 16th minute.

It was their striker, Jeremy Ebobisse, who made the defensive play of the game to get things going. As the Quakes tried to win the ball back in Austin’s end, Ebobisse made a sliding tackle that knocked the ball free and left it in a tantalizing position for the Quakes’ best player, Cristian Espinoza.

The Argentinian winger took a few touches, then hammered home a low shot to the near post that put the Earthquakes ahead 1-0. PayPal Park erupted and, for a moment, the Quakes looked like they’d be in position to host a playoff game.

Their only defensive mistake of the game was hardly a mistake at all; it’s hard to say the Earthquakes could have done anything to stop it.

In the 32nd minute, Austin’s Owen Wolff scored a beautiful goal. It began with an unassuming cross towards the top of the box, but resulted in an unthinkable deflected header that looked like it was on a string, looping over the Quakes goalkeeper, Daniel, and tucking itself into the upper corner of the net.

The sellout crowd at PayPal Park went silent. What just happened?

The Quakes had hardly given Austin any chances all night. Their first shot on goal was their only shot on goal in the entire 90 minutes.

And for the rest of the game, the Earthquakes carried most of the possession and almost all of the offensive opportunities. They just couldn’t convert.

The rebuilt back line, starring Rodrigues and Jonathan Mensah in center back roles, was rock solid. Quakes’ homegrown center defensive midfielder and team captain, Jackson Yueill, played a commanding game in the conductor role, dipping and diving out of the midfield to control the pace and tempo like a seasoned veteran.

Espinoza created chance after chance, including a pair of crosses that landed on the foot of Ebobisse, but he launched one at the keeper and another that hit the inside of the post.

Mensah had the Quakes last chance, a bullet off his head that looked destined for the right corner but was stopped by Austin goalie Brad Stuver.

“We tried to push the game to win,” Espinoza said. “Unfortunately we couldn’t score. We hit the post and the keeper saved two or three clear chances.”

Things got weird at the end, when the Quakes looked unsure if they should aggressively pursue a victory or protect the 1-1 draw. At one point, their goalie, Daniel, started running up the field to try to participate in a corner kick before the coaching staff sent him back.

“Once we got to minute 80, we needed to find the right balance,” Gonzalez said. “Austin, at any moment, can hurt you in transition. We can’t give up the lead. We communicated that.”

If the Quakes can beat KC on Wednesday, they’ll advance to a best-of-three playoff against St. Louis City FC, the best team in the Western Conference. It would guarantee the Quakes a home playoff game for the first time since 2012, and the first time ever at PayPal Park.

“From the beginning of the year, I felt a different energy with the team,” Espinoza said. “That has made me very happy.”

Saturday evening at PayPal Park could mark the turnaround of a struggling franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game in 11 years. It could be the sign of a club that’s changed directions behind a new coach with a new vision.

For the San Jose Earthquakes, a win in their regular-season finale against Austin FC would clinch a berth in the MLS Playoffs for the first time since 2020. A win combined with either a loss or tie from either FC Dallas or Portland, and the Earthquakes will host a playoff game at PayPal Park for the first time in the stadium’s eight-year history.

“I think we’re all hungry,” said striker Jeremy Ebobisse, who has 10 goals in 33 matches. “I know it’s been a while since the Quakes have had a chance to play for a playoff position.”

With MLS’ new expanded playoff format, the top seven teams in each conference earn a berth to the first round of the playoffs, which feature a best-of-three format in which the higher seed hosts two games and the lower seed hosts one.

The eighth and ninth seeds qualify for a wild card spot and will play a single-game elimination match hosted by the higher seed.

The Earthquakes (10-13-10) enter Saturday sitting in the ninth spot with 43 points, the same total as FC Dallas (10-13-10) and Portland (11-13-12). But they’re behind Portland on the first tiebreaker (wins) and Dallas on the second tiebreaker (goal differential), leaving them in a tricky position.

The two teams behind the Quakes, Sporting KC (11-8-14) and Minnesota (10-11-12), are each sitting at 41 points and will play against one another on Saturday. If they draw, the Quakes will automatically qualify as the nine seed, no matter their result. But if either Sporting KC or Minnesota wins and the Quakes do not, the Quakes are out of the playoffs yet again.

They’ve qualified just twice in the last decade (2017 and ‘20) and were booted in the first round each time. They haven’t won a playoff game since 2012.

“The difference for me compared to previous years is I think the couple times we made the playoffs before, we limped in,” said Quakes general manager Chris Leitch. “This year, this team wants to run to this opportunity. We don’t feel like we’re lucky to be there. We feel like we deserve to be there.”

Led by first-year coach Luchi Gonzalez, an assistant coach for the U.S. Men’s National Team during the 2022 World Cup, the Earthquakes have transformed their play style to become more of a secure, defensive-minded club that’s difficult to break down but doesn’t score many goals.

They’ve allowed just 42 goals, fourth-least in the Western Conference, but have scored just 38, worse than all but two teams. MLS MVP finalist Cristian Espinoza leads the team with 12 goals.

Against Austin, there will be more incentive to go for a win than to play safely, given a win guarantees them a playoff spot.

The only way a draw helps the Quakes is if FC Dallas or Portland lose, in which case the Quakes could move ahead of them in the standings and end up in a position to host the wild-card game instead of playing on the road. A draw for San Jose paired with losses from both FC Dallas and Portland would mean the Quakes wouldn’t have to play in the wild-card game and would advance to a best-of-three series against the No. 2 seed next weekend.

Austin has already been eliminated from playoff contention, “but we’re not taking them for granted,” Ebobisse said. “When we were eliminated last year we took points off people who were still pushing for playoff position. So we know what it’s like to be them, coming in and wanting to play the spoiler.”

While advancing to the postseason would be a great success for a team that finished in last place a year ago, it would also result in a first-round matchup with St. Louis City FC, an expansion team that has dominated the conference this year and is sitting comfortably at the top of the table.

“I’d love to play them in the next round, that’d be awesome,” Gonzalez said. “But that’s not the thought. We have to earn that. We’re not there yet.”

The Quakes would be in a much better position had they held onto their 1-0 lead against FC Dallas last weekend. Ebobisse scored in the third minute to put his team ahead, but the Quakes surrendered a tie-breaking goal in the 57th minute and ended up with a 1-1 draw.

“This league is so tight, anybody can win any game at any time,” Gonzalez said. “I like that we’re doing it at home. At home, we’ve been a force. With our fans behind us, with the energy of the team collectively and in the club.

“We’re excited about this opportunity. We show our best when we’re enjoying ourselves, enjoying the opportunity, and embracing it, no matter the stakes or possible consequences. Stay present, enjoy it, and stay together.”

He sat calmly with his whistle, blowing it only when necessary, but rarely saying much as his players finished their training session Wednesday morning at PayPal Park.

As he wraps up his first season as the head coach of the San Jose Earthquakes with a must-win game against Austin FC on Saturday, Gonzalez hopes he created a culture that prioritizes stability and process, one that encourages development and believes success isn’t always linear.

“I’m going to go to sleep at peace knowing I’m trying my personal best and the players are trying their best,” he said. “I think we’re close to our potential. That’s where I’m hopeful.”

A win on Saturday and the Earthquakes would clinch a playoff berth and secure an opportunity to host a postseason game for the first time since 2012, before the opening of PayPal Park.

“We know the stakes, but we can’t overthink it,” Gonzalez said. “We have to be focused on the moment.”

Under previous coach Matias Almeyda, things had gotten ugly around PayPal Park. In his final year, Almeyda was caught on video in a screaming match with fans at the stadium, began regularly skipping league-mandated postgame interviews and was reportedly trying to get fired so that he could continue getting paid while pursuing other coaching opportunities.

The Quakes finally parted ways with Almeyda early in the 2022 season after parts of four disastrous seasons in which they never finished with a positive goal differential.

General manager Chris Leitch, a former Earthquakes defender who took over the job in 2021, got his first chance to hire his own manager.

“I think the guys here were ready and needed someone to come in and set a higher standard,” Leitch said Wednesday. “To be quite honest, they weren’t going to want to be here unless we raised that standard.”

To Leitch, there was nobody better suited than Gonzalez, 41, who took over the club after finishing the 2022 World Cup as an assistant coach for the United States Men’s National Team, which advanced to the Round of 16 before a decisive 3-1 defeat to the Netherlands.

“Lucci’s standards are very high,” Leitch said.

Gonzalez’s job was a difficult one: Inherit a club in disarray, create a new culture that prioritizes player development while also providing a much-needed upgrade to the on-field product.

Making the postseason is “a minimum standard and minimum expectation for us,” Leitch said.

But if Gonzalez’s first year is going to be judged on whether or not the Quakes make the postseason, that judgment will have to wait until Saturday, when they have a win-and-you’re-in scenario against Austin, a scrappy club that’s out of playoff contention.

It’s fair to wonder if his first year in the Bay Area has already been a success. The Quakes scrapped the chaotic, wide-open style of play they had last season and rebuilt the back line, opting to create a secure style that relies on structure and sound defensive play.

In 33 games this year, they’ve allowed just 42 goals, fourth-fewest in the Western Conference, while nearly halving their total for last year, when they allowed a league-high 69 goals on their way to a last-place finish.

Disappointment could be found in their attack. They’ve scored just 38 goals while fielding a roster without any big-name international stars.

At a time when Messi set a new MLS record with his compensation at Inter Miami checking in at over $20 million this season, the Quakes, owned and operated by A’s owner John Fisher, have an entire team payroll of about $14 million, 18th out of 29 teams. Their highest-paid player is Jamiro Monteiro, who is making $1.2 million.

Leitch understands that modern soccer fans crave a more attacking-minded style of play, “but part of being attractive is winning,” he said.

Take 25-year-old striker Jeremy Ebobisse, for example. He scored 17 goals last year, but has scored just 10 this year. In Gonzalez’s system, he had to learn how to be a different kind of striker, one who spends less time waiting to make attacking runs and more time being active on the field, pressuring the defense and trying to create turnovers.

“Different systems and different needs are going to require different expectations of that striker to be more complete and more helpful in different aspects of that game,” Ebobisse said. “What we do is force turnovers in the attacking half, force longballs that our defenders are eager to gobble up and send back for our attacking players to finish off.

“We just need a couple more moments of magic to compliment what has been a very sturdy foundation.”

Winger Cristian Espinoza leads the team with 12 goals and eight assists while being involved in 65% of the team’s goals, enough to earn a finalist position for this year’s MVP award.

The Quakes are also feeling good about their youth development program, which sent more academy players to the U-17 national team than any other club in MLS.

Do they need to win Saturday for this season to be considered a success? Leitch declined to answer that question.

“I think it was unrealistic to think it was just going to turn, to be a complete 180 and a huge, complete change,” Gonzalez said. “No, these players are evolving. We have an awesome foundation with our stadium, our club, our players, our staff. Now it’s about building on that foundation.

“We haven’t reached our potential yet.”

And on Wednesday morning, Montoya got his dream job: head coach of Bay FC, the new expansion team in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) that will begin play in the 2024 season at PayPal Park.

“It makes perfect sense for me,” Montoya told the Bay Area News Group this week. “I love this game, it’s all I’ve done all my life since I was 6 years old. It started here in the Bay Area… It’s one of the best places in the world for football. On the women’s side we have some of the best players ever to come out of Northern California. I have the opportunity to develop players and teach the game the way I love to play it.”

Montoya promised local fans that they’ll get an exciting, fast-paced and attacking-minded brand of football out of his squad.

“This is the only way I know how to play, whether it’s right or wrong,” he said. “So why not?”

Bay FC general manager Lucy Rushton, the former D.C. United GM who once became the second woman ever to lead an MLS front office, said she put together a long and exhausting search while looking for the team’s first head coach, but all the fingers kept pointing toward Montoya.

“I’ve been going to a lot of NWSL games and I cannot walk anywhere with Albertin without getting stopped,” she said. “It’s the most frustrating thing ever. Wherever I go – I go to KC, I go to Washington, Orlando, wherever, they’ll ask me, ‘Albertin lives in the Bay Area; do you know him?’

“This guy is going to sell the stadium out.”

Montoya’s journey was a tumultuous one. He arrived in Miami after his family escaped from Cuba in 1980, when he was just 5 years old. His family eventually settled in Mountain View, where his great grandfather had escaped to years earlier.

Under his family’s guidance, Albertin became a quick study on the pitch and eventually went on to star for the United States team that advanced to the quarterfinals in the U-17 World Cup in Italy.

He played for four years at Santa Clara before he was drafted by the Clash, now known as the Earthquakes, with the fourth overall pick in the 1997 MLS Draft.

Getting seriously hurt in his first game forced him to change career paths, though.

“My injury lasted three years,” he said. “I thought I’d go back and play. In the meantime, I started helping a local club, Mountain View Los Altos soccer club. I grew up playing there. My dad was coaching there. My dad asked me to help a U-10 team. I was thinking I would go back to MLS, but my injury was complicated. Three years later I needed another surgery.”

After retiring from his playing career he began coaching regularly at MVLA, now considered one of the top youth clubs in California. He took over a team of 8- and 9-year-old girls that he’d coach for the next 10 years.

One girl on that team was Margueritte Aozasa, who would later star at Santa Clara and coach at Stanford. Last year, she took over the UCLA women’s soccer program and led them to a national championship, becoming the first-ever woman of color and first-ever rookie coach to capture the title.

Aozasa remembers falling in love with the game because of Montoya.

“We had the best time ever,” said Aozasa, who is leading a Bruins team currently ranked No. 5 in the nation. “He would play against us all the time. We’d play 11-on-1. And sadly, he’d always win. And he’d just joke with us but also hold us accountable. We didn’t want to do anything wrong by him. I think it’s because we were truly enjoying ourselves. And he would be funny and joking and then OK, now it’s time to be serious. He coached us through that really well. We could go from crying with laughter to business with the snap of his fingers.”

Montoya coached her at MLVA through high school. His wife, Erin, also coached her.

At Aozasa’s high school graduation, the Montoyas were sitting in the front row with tears in their eyes.

“We grew up together,” Aozasa said. “We watched him grow up alongside us.”

Montoya has also been the co-head coach of the California Storm as part of the Women’s Premier Soccer League from 1999 to ‘06. He was the head coach of FC Gold Pride as part of Women’s Professional Soccer in 2009 and ‘10. And he was the head coach of the United States Women’s National Team U-17 club that won a CONCACAF title in 2012.

Most recently, the 48-year-old was the interim head coach for the NWSL’s Washington Spirit last year.

He said he still loves coaching the little ones, often going straight from a training session with professionals to coaching a team of 9-year-olds.

“You touch kids’ lives, that’s what’s so special,” he said. “You can have such a huge impact on their lives and it changes them if it’s done the right way. It can be done at every level. Even the pros still want to learn.”

Montoya hopes to find players with a high soccer IQ for Bay FC’s inaugural season.

Aozasa said she can’t wait to get to a game at PayPal Park.

“He brings so much life and energy and enjoyment to the game,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.

“Even though I‘m more the mentee than the mentor, I’m so proud of him and excited for him. He’s such a talent. And truly has a gift for coaching. I believe he deserved this, and he deserves to be recognized as one of the best coaches in the country, if not in the world.”

But instead, the discourse on social media over the past two days is all about owner John Fisher’s seemingly throwaway comment that bashes the team and its stadium.

Buried deep in a recent story about Fisher’s other team, the Oakland A’s, and its fight with the City of Oakland over ballpark issues came a passage where Fisher effectively bashes the stadium that San Jose helped build for his soccer team.

“The comparison between the A’s and the Earthquakes is ‘apples to oranges,’ Fisher says,” ESPN’s Tim Keown wrote in the story. “And, according to Fisher, the eight-year-old PayPal Stadium in San Jose is already outdated compared to newer MLS stadiums — he mentions LAFC, St. Louis and Austin — and lacks the capacity and premium seating that drives the kind of revenue needed to compete for championships.”

It’s an eyebrow-raising comment about PayPal Park, which was built for $100 million in 2015 on land that was purchased from the city of San Jose at significant discounts from initial offerings. When asked for comment on Fisher’s “outdated” remark, San Jose mayor Matt Mahan didn’t seem to agree with the Quakes owner.

“PayPal Park offers an incredible fan experience. My family and I love to cheer on the Quakes  — and will soon cheer on Bay FC there,” Mahan said in a statement. ”I hope the stadium’s ownership will continue to invest to ensure it is second to none.”

The comment from Fisher comes just as the Quakes on the pitch are looking to secure a playoff spot for the first time since 2020 and just the third time since 2012, when San Jose was the best team in the MLS regular season. That season was the first year that the now-named PayPal Park was under construction, leaving hope for better days ahead with a new home.

But since PayPal Park opened in 2015, Fisher has not used the new stadium for the Earthquakes to raise spending on the team’s product on the field. As this news organization broke down in May, the Earthquakes rank 21st out of 29 MLS teams in spending in 2023, and they’ve been in the bottom half of the MLS in every season since 2015.

That fact was also cited in the recent ESPN piece, which noted that current A’s president Dave Kaval was the then-president of the Quakes who helped get the stadium built. Asked about the comparison by ESPN, Kaval reportedly sidestepped the question by saying, “I’m a big believer in the revenue opportunity in Las Vegas.”

Kaval was also a big believer in the opportunities in San Jose, and took a lot of credit for the stadium in a 2016 sports management book that was co-written in part by George Foster, who was Kaval’s professor at Stanford.

In “Sports Business Management: Decision Making Around the Globe,” Foster and co-authors Norm O’Reilly and Antonio Dàvila wrote that the very same premium seating that Fisher complained PayPal Park lacked was something that wasn’t initially planned — and took Kaval’s work to get done.

“In order to convince ownership to make the additional investment in these amenities, Kaval and his team packaged and sold all 12 field suites and more than 1,000 club seats over a six-month period in 2012,” the book reads. “This gave ownership more confidence in the endeavor and enhanced the construction budget to accommodate these upgrades.”

Now, not even a decade after the stadium opened near the San Jose Airport, Fisher is citing the thing he needed to be convinced of doing in the first place as something that is lacking.

The comment has sent social media ablaze on X, formerly known as Twitter, with several posts about Fisher’s comments garnering hundreds of likes, reposts and responses.

Quakes Epicenter, a prominent blog that covers the team, has not posted about the team’s on-field playoff push once since the comment began circulating on social media early Thursday morning.

Still, the season will march on for the Quakes, who enter Saturday’s match against Nashville SC in playoff contention in the Western Conference, as they still sit in seventh place at 40 points.

For San Jose, it means finishing anywhere in the top-eight will bring PayPal Park its first-ever postseason match, and the first hosted by the Quakes at all since 2012. But after suffering a 2-1 loss to the Portland Timbers on the road on Wednesday, the Quakes have only picked up eight points in its last seven matches, making their playoff hopes look slimmer.

After the match against Nashville, San Jose’s final three matches of the season will be against three teams chasing them in the West. The Quakes will play at Minnesota on Sept. 30 and at Dallas on Oct. 7 before hosting Austin on Oct. 21, the final day of the regular season.

In most normal seasons, those matches would be the focus of the fan base heading into a pivotal final stretch.

But thanks to Fisher’s comment, fans in San Jose feel a similar rage against their owner as baseball fans in Oakland do.

Marleau and Wondolowski were thought to be so synonymous with the city that the San Jose Sports Authority’s board of directors adjusted their bylaws to get both into the hall this year.

Normally, individuals must be retired for at least five years or be over the age of 50 before they can be eligible for consideration. But those guidelines were waived for the 44-year-old Marleau, who played 21 seasons for the Sharks, and the 40-year-old Wondolowski, who played 13-plus seasons with the Earthquakes before he retired in 2021. Marleau officially retired last year.

“To me. there’s three individuals whose DNA is San Jose, and that’s Patrick Marleau, Chris Wondolowski, and Kerri Walsh,” said John Poch, the executive director of the San Jose Sports Authority. “So I presented to our board that when these three athletes retire, there should not be a waiting period. I think there are exceptions to the rule, and so the board unanimously passed it.”

The Nov. 8 ceremony at SAP Center marks the 28th year of the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame honoring South Bay sports legends. Including this class, 121 South Bay sports figures have been enshrined.

“It’d be a case-by-case each year,” Poch said, “but for this year, that’s why Patrick and Wondo were automatically voted and unanimously selected.”

Fair, 45, attended Los Altos High School before she starred at North Carolina, helping the Tar Heels win three NCAA titles. Fair earned 120 caps playing for the women’s national team and helped the 1999 World Cup team win gold and the 2000 Olympic team capture silver.

Stieb, 66, was born in Santa Ana but he and his family moved to the South Bay in the early 1970s. He attended Oak Grove High School, San Jose City College and Southern Illinois University before he was drafted in the fifth round by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1978 as a 20-year-old.

Stieb went on to become one of MLB’s winningest pitchers in the 1980s and finished his 16-season big league career with 176 victories.

“I grew up watching Dave play for the Blue Jays,” said Marleau, an Aneroid, Saskatchewan native. “And then just reading about Lorrie and Chris and all of their accomplishments, it’s a pretty strong class, to say the least.”

Here’s a bit more information on the inductees.

Lorrie Fair: As a kid growing up in Los Altos, Fair figured she could have a future in soccer when she was selected to an under-19 regional team when she was 14. That was quickly followed by an invitation to join an under-20 national team and while she was still in high school, she received an invitation to an Olympic training camp.

“My goal was to just play and hopefully get a college scholarship out of it because we didn’t have a ton of money to spend on university, on a tertiary education,” Fair said. “But what happened was so much more.”

When she was 20, Fair played in four matches at the 1999 World Cup, which culminated with Brandi Chastain’s unforgettable shootout goal in the final as the U.S. beat China. She also competed in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, playing every minute in five matches as the Americans lost to Norway in the gold medal game.

Fair joins Chastain, Danielle Slayton, Aly Wagner, Julie Foudy, and Keri Sanchez as the only women’s soccer players who have been enshrined into the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.

Patrick Marleau: Marleau was drafted second overall by the Sharks in 1997, and the then-17-year-old forward from a small town in Western Canada would become a future cornerstone of the organization.

Marleau played with the Sharks from 1997 to 2017, and again from 2019 to 2021, setting franchise marks for games played (1,607), goals (522), and points (1,111). He would finish his career with 556 goals, 1,197 points, and an NHL record 1,779 games.

Marleau twice represented Canada at the Winter Olympics, winning gold in both 2010 and 2014. He finished his NHL career having played 910 consecutive games, the fifth-longest streak in league history.

Marleau joins George Gund III, Arturs Irbe, Owen Nolan, Doug Wilson, and Evgeni Nabokov as the only members of the Sharks organization who have been elected to the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.

Dave Stieb: Stieb was an outfielder for most of his amateur career and arrived at Southern Illinois in 1976 playing that position. But in 1978, the Salukies had injuries to their pitching staff, and Stieb’s ability to throw strikes during batting practice caught the attention of the coaches.

Stieb, then a sophomore, went into the bullpen to throw and SIU pitching coach Mark Newman asked if the right-hander could help as a reliever.

“I said, ‘That’s all you want me to do?’,” Stieb asked. “He said yes, and I went, ‘Sure.”

Stieb was SIU’s best hitter that season, hitting .394 with 12 homers and 48 RBI in 51 games. But in 17 2/3 innings pitched over six games, including one start, Stieb struck out 24 and had a 2.02 ERA. A Blue Jays scout saw one of those appearances, asked him a bunch of questions that Stieb all said yes to, and Toronto ended up drafting him. Stieb signed and about a year later, was in Memorial Stadium in Baltimore making his MLB debut.

Stieb would go on to pitch in 443 big league games, owning a record of 176-137 with a 3.44 ERA. His 175 wins are the most in Blue Jays history, as he helped the team reach the postseason for the first time in 1985. Stieb’s WAR of 45.2 led all pitchers in the 1980s.

Chris Wondolowski: Wondolowski, or Wondo as he’s more commonly known, is a classic late bloomer.

A Danville native, Wondolowski wasn’t highly recruited coming out of De La Salle High School in Concord and ended up at Chico State. But Wondolowski had a relentless motor and became a decorated athlete, helping Chico State finish as NCAA Division II national runners-up in 2003 when he was named a second-team All-American.

Wondolowski went from being a late-round pick in the 2005 MLS Supplemental Draft to becoming the league’s all-time leading scorer with 171 goals. He was a two-time MLS Cup Champion, earned the MLS Most Valuable Player award in 2012 and three consecutive MLS Best XI awards, along with two MLS scoring titles.

Internationally, Wondolowski made 35 appearances and scored 11 goals for the United States. He became the first Native American to play for the U.S. at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and is the fourth former Earthquakes player to make the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame, joining Paul Child, Mani Hernandez, and John Doyle.

The Quakes acquired forward Matthew Hoppe on a 12-month loan from Middlesborough, a club in England’s second-tier Championship.

Hoppe, 22, has played in eight matches for the U.S. men’s national team already in his career, including playing in two matches in 2023. He has one goal with the USMNT so far.

“Matthew is an exciting, young player who has already gotten a lot of experience in a number of different leagues,” Earthquakes general manager Chris Leitch said in a statement. “He has also played at the international level and was a big part of the U.S. Gold Cup victory in 2021. With his ability to play multiple positions, he is going to be an important addition to our attacking core.”

Hoppe is under contract with Middlesborough and played for the club in the EFL Championship during the fall of 2022, but most recently played with Scottish side Hibernian on a loan, tallying a goal and an assist in nine appearances during the spring of 2023. He started his senior club career at German club Schalke, where he became the first American player to score a hat trick in the Bundesliga on Jan. 1, 2021.

A native of Yorba Linda in Southern California, the 6-foot-3 forward played for one season with the LA Galaxy’s academy at the beginning of his youth career at 13 years old. He will make his return to the United States to play for the Galaxy’s NorCal rivals.

Hoppe’s signing, which had to occur before the MLS summer transfer window closed at 10 p.m. PT on Wednesday night, adds another option to Earthquakes’ suddenly deep stable of forwards. San Jose recently inked 2023 MLS All-Star Cristian Espinoza to an extension and added Ayo Akinola on loan from Toronto FC to join Jeremy Ebobisse and Cade Cowell as options up front. Cowell and Hoppe have played together for the national team before, sharing the pitch for 10 minutes during a January match against Serbia.

The Quakes currently sit tied for sixth place in the Western Conference with 32 points. In the MLS’ new playoff format, nine teams make the playoffs, which has the eighth and ninth place teams playing a Wild Card match before a best-of-three first round.

In that round, the matches will have a home-away-home format, meaning San Jose is guaranteed its first playoff match at PayPal Park if they can finish the regular season in the top seven. The remaining rounds after the first round are single elimination, all the way to the MLS Cup.

The Quakes are currently on a month-long break from MLS regular season action to allow MLS and Mexico’s top professional league Liga MX to play the Leagues Cup. San Jose lost both of its Leagues Cup group stage matches, to Portland and Tigres, to be eliminated from the competition.

General manager Chris Leitch said Wednesday that it would be hard to add another signing under the salary cap before the secondary transfer window ends on Aug. 2.

“It’s a salary cap league and there are constraints for sure,” Leitch said. “It sounds easy to have a lot of players go out and a lot of players come in, but it’s not always that easy. Plus we like our group and we think it can be really competitive here.”

The secondary transfer window is the last time that MLS teams can trade with each other or sign someone from abroad and have those players be eligible for competition this season.

San Jose hasn’t won a playoff game since 2012 or appeared in the postseason since 2020, but being in playoff position this year hasn’t spurred any major moves yet this summer. Akinola, who made 39 starts and played 78 games in six seasons in Toronto, is the only player they’ve brought in.

The Quakes are hoping a change in environment will jumpstart Akinola, who hasn’t registered a goal or an assist in 14 games (four starts) this season. But the 23-year-old Canadian is not likely to be a regular starter for the Quakes unless there are departures from the current group of forwards.

“I’ve been traded in my career and sometimes a player needs a little change of scenery to really kick in again,” Leitch said. “I think Ayo has shown great promise in his time in MLS to date. He has the quality to add to the competitive depth of our front line.”

That means, pending additional moves in the next week, the Quakes (8-7-8, 32 points) will stick with the group that has put them in sixth place in the Western Conference leading up to a month-long break for the ongoing Leagues Cup.

The top seven teams make the first round of the playoffs automatically, while the eighth- and ninth-place teams face off in a play-in game. Minnesota is currently in 10th place with 28 points but has played one fewer game than San Jose.

“We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the roster,” Leitch said. “That being said, we’re also confident with our group of players. This group has already shown they can get results against some of the best teams in the league.”

They did lock up Espinoza, a 28-year-old Argentinian who just appeared in his first MLS All-Star Game and holds the club record for career assists (51) despite arriving just four years ago from Spain. The winger is now signed through 2025 with a club option for 2026.

“From my perspective, it’s bigger than most any moves I’ve seen around MLS, making sure that Cristian is re-signed,” Leitch said. “It speaks to the direction he feels this club is heading.”

The Quakes are currently in the midst of Leagues Cup competition, which incorporates the top club teams in North America in three-team pools. San Jose lost to Portland 2-0 and faces Mexican club Tigres Sunday at 8 p.m. at PayPal Park. Tigres beat the Timbers 2-1 on Wednesday, so the Quakes need at least a two-goal victory to advance on goal differential out of the pool and into the 32-team tournament bracket.

If the Quakes are eliminated in pool play on Sunday, then they won’t play again until the MLS season restarts on Aug. 20. From there, San Jose will have 11 games to earn a chance to host a playoff game for the first time since moving to PayPal Park in 2015.

The Quakes have an opportunity to gather momentum after the break: Their first four games are against teams below them in the Western Conference standings.