Quakes Leave for North London

The Quakes leave today for 10 days of training and 3 exhibition games at Tottenham’s training grounds, Spurs Lodge, in London. The Quakes trained in London with Tottenham during preseason last year and both coaches and players stated that the time spent training and bonding in London helped them make the playoffs in 2010. The Quakes will play an exhibition game against Tottenham’s reserve squad. Opponents for the other 2 games have yet to be determined.

Khari Stephenson has recently come to agreements to re-sign with the Quakes. Yallop and Doyle had been pushing for a while to bring Khari back. He’s been on loan from his top flight Norway club Aalesunds FK. Aalesunds wanted too much money for the Quakes to buy out Khari. Doyle and Khari’s agent have been bargaining with Aalesunds to lower the price since the original offering would have put the Quakes over their salary cap. Luckily they reached a deal a couple days ago. Khari has a new 3 year deal with the Quakes, terms of the deal are unannounced as per league rules.

Khari came to us in the beginning of August. His first game showed us what he could bring to the table. On August 14 against Kansas City Khari perfectly placed a 25 yard pass to the foot of Wondo which he buried in the net on the volley. It looked like it would be a great second half of the season with someone like Khari providing service to the forwards. Unfortunately the acquisition of Geovanni threw everything out of sorts. Yallop was trying to fit Geo into the system while still keeping Khari, Convey and shuffling Sealy, Cronin and Ring around to figure out the most potent midfield combo. This movement took away from Khari’s abilities to effectively feed the forwards and he disappeared after the August 21 game at Houston when he set up Geo’s goal and scored himself.

Yallop and Doyle are confident that Khari will once again be the link between the backline and the forwards to get the ball moving forward effectively.

According to ESPN, the Quakes have signed Rafael Baca. He played at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and was not picked up in the draft last month. A chance meeting with one of the assistant coaches led to a tryout. Baca was playing in the Quakes’ scrimmage against the Galaxy last week and impressed enough to be signed to the team.

The Quakes exhibition game record for last week was 1-1-1. They lost to Chivas USA, tied Los Angeles and won against Ventura Fusion FC. The Quakes beat the Cal Bears (college team) 4-0 yesterday at the Nutrilite Training Facility in San Jose/Santa Clara. As we all know, the outcomes of preseason games means little. These games are mostly about assessing physical ability and giving trialists an opportunity to display their abilities. Over 200 people turned up for the Quakes open tryout earlier this year and some were asked to join the team in Ventura and Southern California. Who these people were, we may never know, although Rafael Baca was playing in the Galaxy game, as previously mentioned.

Hopefully we can get some pictures from their London trip and when news comes in about who else they will be playing against I’ll post that info.

GO QUAKES

Category: Armchair Coach, Management, Numbers, Offseason Chat, Player News, Preseason