San Jose Earthquakes' Chris Wondolowski discusses his motivation in his last MLS season
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SAN JOSE — A season after becoming Major League Soccer’s all-time scoring king, Chris Wondolowski’s goals in his 16th and final season are simple: “I want to win,” the Earthquakes captain said Wednesday during the team’s media day.
“I don’t have to worry about any records or anything else,” added Wondolowski, a Danville native who has scored 159 goals since getting drafted in 2005.
The Earthquakes missed advancing to the MLS Cup playoffs last season after losing the final six games. Those defeats negated Wondolowski’s joy of breaking Landon Donovan’s career scoring record.
Wondolowski, 36, also was asked if he will struggle to walk away from the game.
“I’ll probably always wrestle with that and always think I can be on the field,” he said. “I’ll probably be 80 years old with a walker thinking I could have finished that.”
The team also announced it has secured a three-year jersey deal with Sunnyvale communications firm Intermedia. Owner John Fisher praised the deal as a perfect fit for a team that had gone a year without a jersey sponsor.
Team vice president Jared Shawlee said Sutter Health, which had been the previous sponsor, will continue to support teams in the Quakes Academy.
The sponsorship is needed for a mid-level spending team that is trying to keep pace in a league that is striking big deals for some of the world’s big names. The Los Angeles Galaxy this week announced the signing of Mexican star Javier Hernandez with a $10 million transfer fee and a salary reportedly close to $6 million.
The Quakes, which open the 2020 season at home Feb. 29 against Toronto FC, also have not found a replacement for naming rights of their 18,000-seat stadium. Avaya Inc., a Santa Clara-based telecommunications company, originally had agreed to pay $20 million over 10 years for naming rights when the stadium opened in 2015.
But in 2017, Avaya officials asked a federal bankruptcy court in New York to reduce the terms. The Earthquakes have gone without a stadium sponsor for two years.
The team changed the name this week to Earthquakes Stadium — at least until a new sponsor can be secured.
