Shea Salinas made his final home appearance with the Earthquakes memorable Saturday night at PayPal Park.
The popular midfielder who has played 13 seasons for San Jose scored the game-winning goal in the 52nd minute of a 2-0 triumph over Minnesota United.
Salinas, in his 15th season overall, holds the club’s all-time assists record (50).
On his climactic goal that broke a scoreless deadlock, Salinas seized the initiative. He took a direct free kick, and his low shot caromed off the leg of a Minnesota player and into back of the net.
“I haven’t taken a direct free kick my entire career,” Salinas said. “I was thinking that the grass is wet, the ground is hard, I’m just going to try and hit it low and hope that it skips, and the goalie bobbles it into the corner.
“God had a different plan. I tried to hit it with the inside of my foot to the corner and it got a good deflection and went into the back of the net. I think God had this all planned out and I got to celebrate,” he continued.
Salinas, normally a reserve this season, asked interim head coach Alex Covelo if he could start in the run-up to the match.
“He said, ‘Alex, I would love to start. I’m feeling the butterflies in my stomach again.’ So, I said, ‘Let’s go.’ That’s it. He did very well,” the coach shared.
Fittingly, on Sunday, Salinas received the club’s Andrew Bedard Spirit of the Game Award/Humanitarian of the Year for the fifth time (2009, 2012, 2014, 2015).
San Jose (8-10-15, 34 points) rounded out the scoring on a goal by Benji Kikanović, who sent a low shot just inside the far post.
Covelo has come to expect good things from Salinas.
“He always has been a role model on and off the field. I was on the bench in 2017 when Shea scored the second goal and gave us the victory (over the Galaxy) at Stanford. It has been a pleasure.”
Salinas says MLS has grown “a ton” these past 15 years. Early in his career not many people knew the league existed. Now it’s an international brand, he says.
“The quality of players has grown tremendously,” Salinas said. “I’ve been lucky to survive for 15 years. We have 18 and 19-year-old kids that are way ahead of where I have been.”
The Earthquakes’ club award winners: Jeremy Ebobisse, Offensive Player of the Year, and Player’s Player of the Year; JT Marcinkowski, Defensive Player of the Year; Benji Kikanović, Young Player of the Year; Tommy Thompson, Media Good Guy; Shea Salinas for the Andrew Bedard Spirit of the Game Award/Humanitarian of the Year.
Join the Conversation
We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.