{"id":282097,"date":"2026-04-23T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282097\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:32:08","slug":"san-jose-earthquakes-take-supporters-shield-lead-behind-historic-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282097\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Earthquakes take Supporters’ Shield lead behind historic start"},"content":{"rendered":"

After staging a second-half comeback against Austin FC<\/a> on Wednesday night at PayPal Park, eventually\u00a0winning 5-1<\/a>, San Jose became the first team in MLS’s post-shootout era (2000) to win eight of their first nine games to begin a season.<\/p>\n

With a league-best 24 points, they’re ahead of Vancouver Whitecaps FC<\/a> on the Supporters’ Shield table with one more game played.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think winning games is a starting point. We won nine games last year. We have eight now,” said head coach Bruce Arena after the match.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully, we can get past nine, and that remains to be seen.”<\/p>\n

\n Unlikely contender<\/p>\n

Back in preseason, when asked to predict who would sit atop the Supporters’ Shield standings at this point, few would have picked San Jose.<\/p>\n

The club finished 10th in the Western Conference a year ago to miss out on the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. Then, they lost three key attackers \u2013 Josef Mart\u00ednez, Chicho Arango<\/a> and Cristian Espinoza<\/a> \u2013 during the offseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that hasn’t derailed San Jose, who are tied for the league lead in goals scored (22) and have evolved into a defensive juggernaut. The Quakes have conceded just four goals all season, tied for the second-fewest in MLS.<\/p>\n

“Just the consistency of our team,” Arena remarked.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we’re a better team defensively this year. Last year, we just made so many foolish errors and conceded goals. But obviously, we have a better team this year. They work for each other.”<\/p>\n

\n More to come<\/p>\n

San Jose are getting incredible early-season performances from Preston Judd<\/a> (5g\/2a), Ousseni Bouda<\/a> (5g\/1a) and homegrown midfielder Niko Tsakiris<\/a> (2g\/6a), to go along with German superstar\u00a0Timo Werner<\/a> (2g\/4a).<\/p>\n

But Arena, who took over ahead of the 2025 campaign, isn’t getting out over his skis.<\/p>\n

“It’s all going to come down to the second half of the season,” said the five-time MLS Cup presented by Audi champion. “It’s great to have a good start, but again, it’s a grind. We have another 25 games left. There’s a lot of soccer being played.<\/p>\n

“We’re really pleased with the group to date. But this is a long haul. We’ve got to be prepared for not only the good days, but some of the days that aren’t so good.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After staging a second-half comeback against Austin FC on Wednesday night at PayPal Park, eventually\u00a0winning 5-1, San Jose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11413,88,1084,90,89,6532,121248],"class_list":["post-282097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-match-reaction","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-earthquakes","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sendtonews","tag-sjvsatx-04-22-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}