San Jose Frogs 4-2 Bakersfield Brigade

Monday July 21st, 2008

With a new coach on the bench (Read below), the San Jose Frogs wanted to prove they could do better than their latest results showed. That's what they did for their last home game last Saturday at James Lick High Schools. The Frogs took the control of the game early as the Brigade seemed tired after their hard fought victory the day before in San Francisco. (Read Match Report)

Nelson Diaz was giving a hard time to the Brigades' defenders since the first minute of the game and, in the 17th minute, he nicely crossed the ball from the left to Andrew Wiedeman. The Frogs' striker, seeing that he didn't have a good angle to take a shot, pushed the ball to the right of the box in Kyle Kaveny's run. The defender's shot left no chance to Eric Franco (Bakersfield's goalkeeper)

It was still early in the game, and the Brigade had time to come back, but Jordan Thorn, for a dangerous and totally useless tackle in the center of the field, made the local team's job easier by receiving a deserved red card.

The Frogs were in an ideal situation. They were leading, controlling the game and the Brigade with one les player seemed to be out of position a couple of times. Eventually, the Frogs cashed in their domination when Wiedeman, from the right side of the box found Dan Oka who just stopped the ball and left it for David Frank coming behind him. Frank took a powerful shot that Franco could only watch finish his run in the back of the net (2-0, 43rd)

Up by 2 goals and a man, the Frogs relaxed a little bit after the break and left the Brigade come back in the game. The visitors had a few good moves and reduced the gap by Cameron Walters who received a nice pass from Wes Feighner. (2-1, 59th)

With 30 minutes to go, the end of the game could have turned in an interesting battle, but quickly, it turned into a real fight. Savio Carrijo (Frogs) and Quincy Amarikwa (the only Brigade's player able to have a real offensive impact so far) came into contact a first time but both used their elbows instead of their shoulders. The free kick was awarded to the Frogs as Amarinkwa did the first foul, but Carrijo received a yellow card because of his inappropriate response. 4 minutes later, the two players found themselves in the same area again...Amarikwa received a red card for his aggressive way of showing his affection for his opponent and Carrijo received a second yellow for responding again. Both players were out, which was not going to help the Brigade.

With 9 men, they showed a lot of courage, but this was not enough to contain the Frogs who wanted to kill the match. The contribution of Imaan Kerchgani (who came in for Dan Oka on the right wing 35 minutes before the end) helped them to do so. His energy instantly provoked a lot of damages in the Brigades' defense and, after one of the many times he made a difference on his wing, he crossed the ball to Stefan Clemens who, from the top of the box found an angle to place the ball in the goal, out of reach of any Brigade's player. (3-1, 61st)

6 minutes later, Kerchgani managed to escape from the Brigades' defenders' vigilance and took a shot that seemed to miss target, but Kaveny luckily found himself on the course of the ball and deflected it into the net to score his second goal of the match. (4-1, 67th)

For the record, the Brigade were rewarded for their courage and reduced the gap in the 87th minute. (Goal: Cameron Walters - Assist: Emanuel Guzman)

The Frogs' website was claiming that they wanted to "finish on a high note". The mission was half way to being accomplished. Winning their last home game was the first part of the task. Now, they needed to confirm for their last game against their Bay Area rival, the San Francisco Seals on Sunday (Read Match Report)

Weiss takes over for Espinoza 2 games before the end

Peter Weiss (left) and Hartmut Esslinger (right) before the Frogs' last home game.

Before the game, The Frogs had announced that Peter Weiss was taking over for head coach Jorge Espinoza for the last two games of the season. We were wondering if the unexpected bad results in the second half of the season were the only reason for this decision. Aaron Castro, the Frogs' manager answered to us: "Yes, it's only two games before the end but we must think about the team first and we want to finish on a high note in front of our fans". About the 3-5-2 the Frogs had been using since the beginning of the season, he said: "no, we're done with that. It's a very difficult system and it takes too much time to get comfortable with it. The pre-season has been too short for that and the players were thinking instead of playing. We're back to a flat 4-4-2."

Thierry Heumann (email)