Soccer
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Imagine for a moment that you’re a hyper-talented young soccer player making your way through your local club’s academy.
You’ve outshone your peers at every level so far, in large part because you’re faster and stronger than everyone else around you. You’re out at practice. You receive the ball on the wing and you recognize a defender closing down the space in front of you. So, you just go ahead and send the ball 20 yards forward. It’s not like he’s going to outrun you to it once it’s past him. After you sprint by, you play the ball centrally to set up a teammate for a shot. The ball caroms off the keeper and, for a moment, exists in purgatory. The keeper scrambles and recovers it. You’re still standing outside the box. And the only thing you hear, despite everything you did before the shot, is someone yelling, “REBOUND!”
It would almost be annoying. But how can you ignore it? The person reminding you to follow up the shot has scored more goals than anyone in MLS history.
Doing the dirty work
Chris Wondolowski didn’t get that academy experience. And he didn’t have a physical skillset that allowed him to avoid close attention to small details. Now, four years removed from a playing career that saw him work his way from Chico State University, to the fourth round of the MLS Supplemental Draft, to a 16-year career and 171 MLS goals, Wondolowski is trying to teach the best and brightest young forwards of the San Jose Earthquakes’ academy that all goals count the same.
“Do some of that dirty work,” Wondolowski, San Jose’s U23 individual development programming head, said. “I think you’ll be rewarded a lot more often. They might not be, you know, big social media hits. It’s not cool posting about your two-yard rebound tap-in. But hey, like, that was a game-winner.”
That’s not to say you have to avoid making a highlight reel. Yeah, Wondo is still going to get on your back about making the near-post run the same way former Houston Dynamo assistant coach John Spencer used to get on him about making the near-post run. Look, even if you don’t get on the ball with that run, you’re setting yourself up to be in position for any rebounds. But Wondo knows there are plenty of ways to succeed. He knows that you can get 10 different opinions on how a single moment of play should develop and all 10 might be correct.
Still, why wouldn’t you make that run when you can? That’s a good run to make. And you can do it even if it’s not totally instinctual.
“I think Wondo had this natural ability to know where to be at the right time, the right place, and he had the ability to finish,” said former teammate and San Jose’s head of youth soccer partnerships Shea Salinas. “But I think what makes a difficult transition for coaches or for players to become coaches is the fact that some things just come natural and are difficult to explain.
“And I think Wondo has a little bit of that, but he also, I mean, he came from a background where he wasn’t expected to be a great pro. He’s from Chico State, a supplemental draft pick, and he had to figure out how to become a really good player. And so I think while figuring out how to become really good player, he learned also how to teach people how to become a really good player. So I think he has the ability to take his experiences, apply them to young players these days and help them figure out how to become better pros.”
The road less traveled
When he arrived to MLS from Chico State, Wondo says he had more experienced players like Craig Waibel, Brian Mullan, Dwayne De Rosario and Brad Davis showing him how to be a better pro. It took a moment for their guidance to pay off, though. He made just 19 starts in his first five MLS seasons. His breakthrough came in 2010, when he started 26 times and scored 18 goals for the Quakes. He proceeded to spend the entire decade scoring double-digit goals every single season. That includes a 27-goal MVP season in 2012 as he led San Jose to the Supporters’ Shield, their most recent trophy.
A few difficult years led to a decade-plus of success. Wondolowski got the time and patience to grow. For academy players existing in an environment where becoming a successful professional can seem like the be-all end-all, failure can be hard to stomach. Even if you haven’t quite grasped the importance of a hard-driving near-post run, maybe Wondo can help you understand how beneficial failure can be.
“Sometimes when you’re playing up and trying to adapt, you stick to the things that work for you,” Wondolowski said. “So there aren’t those times to really try things and be okay with failing at things. And that’s, again, kind of one of the things it’s hard for a 15-year-old to try to understand. It’s okay to fail and it’s actually a good thing, as long as we learn from it. We can’t have the same failures. Like, I hope you are failing sometimes. Otherwise, I think you’re just too safe. You’re not pushing the envelope, you know?”
For Wondo, it’s a little easier to accept failure when you know the folks pushing you will have your back regardless of the outcome. He knows that there are younger players that have more athletic ability, more talent and more technical ability than he did. They also have more opportunities to succeed. So what happens when things don’t go their way?
Wondo sees that some are up for a fight anytime something goes wrong. That’s familiar to him. That’s how he always approached things. There’s a reason teammates like Salinas remember him missing a chance in a game and staying late after the next practice just to finish that same chance over and over until he couldn’t get it wrong.
Others need more guidance. All of them need some kind of support system.
Inspiring future stars
Wondo has seen both kinds of players as a mentor during his playing career and now as a coach. That includes working with former San Jose forward and current Chivas standout Cade Cowell and, now, Cade’s 16-year-old brother Chance, a homegrown player for the Quakes. Both have the kinds of physical tools Wondo lacked. So Wondo is there to help a player like Chance understand how to harness those gifts. That, of course, includes instruction on how to be a professional and constant reminders to be there for a rebound, just in case. But it also includes being a piece of that support.
“It was a little weird at first, because when he first gave me advice, it was like this big, really known guy talking to me,” Chance Cowell said. “But now it’s kind of like we’ve gotten super close together now. So it’s kind of just like talking to a friend.”
Now that he’s behind the scenes, Wondo is learning more about how much the small details matter in coaching. Every practice and every drill is designed with a specific purpose in mind. That’s new to him. So is being a little more patient with how he approaches feedback.
As a player, Salinas remembers Wondolowski as an intense team captain who kept people accountable. Now, Salinas sees Wondo pulling young players to the side for quiet discussions.
It’s just how Wondo gets his soccer fix now after a 17-year playing career. Even better, his role gives him the best of both worlds. He’s able to be involved and watch young players grow each week while still being able to spend time with his family on the weekends. It’s close to a perfect setup, even if Wondo took an imperfect path to get there.
“I tell every player in there, ‘When I was your guys’ age, I wouldn’t have been a part of this.’ You know, a part of this elite program,” Wondolowski said. “I had to evolve and grow. And I think that there’s many different paths and roads to that journey into that final goal, but it’s not always just that fast, expedited freeway. And I think that you need to be able to embrace that and understand that.”
Read MoreAnthony Serna