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Niko Tsakiris grows into starring role for San Jose Earthquakes
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- Niko Tsakiris grows into starring role for San Jose Earthquakes
Niko Tsakiris grows into starring role for San Jose Earthquakes
By Charles Boehm
The term 'statement game' is probably overused in sports these days. It was nevertheless quite difficult to avoid the phrase after Niko Tsakiris tore San Diego FC apart in last week's 3-2 road win for the San Jose Earthquakes .
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The Quakes' homegrown No. 10 slashed the match wide open with a buccaneering strike from outside the penalty box just three minutes in, his first goal since returning, ahead of schedule, from a serious groin issue that sidelined him most of the summer, the first injury of his career to require surgery.
Tsakiris soon outdid himself with assists on both of his team's other goals – the latter a particularly outrageous jaw-dropping 'trivela' delivery whipped right onto the head of Ousseni Bouda with his gifted left foot – as they built a 3-0 lead in the first 35 minutes. He finished the night with a game-high four key passes, 66 touches, a perfect 50/50 passes completed and several defensive contributions.
Back in business
The statement was clear: Tsakiris is back. And, not coincidentally, so are his Quakes.
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"How everything unfolded, it was definitely, like, a turning moment for me and this team, just because of how we were doing after the break," Tsakiris told MLSsoccer.com this week about the big W in San Diego , which runs his season total to 3g/10a in 18 matches.
"And then, OK, maybe we're back to what we were, who we were at the beginning of the year."
With their 21-year-old playmaker fit and firing again, San Jose are suddenly unbeaten in four, after opening the back half of the season with an ugly six-game winless skid that left many observers wondering if their record-breaking 11W-1L-0D start to the year was all a mirage.
That recovery stabilizes the Quakes just in time for their Walmart Saturday Showdown with Son Heung-Min and star-studded LAFC (7:30 pm ET | Apple TV ), set to take place before one of the biggest gates of the MLS season at enormous Levi's Stadium, the Bay Area's 2026 FIFA World Cup site, five miles north of their usual home, PayPal Park.
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"Different venue, more people, bigger crowd, new field," said Tsakiris. "Yes, that is going to be a fun one."
Born into the beautiful game
It's a big stage and an inviting opportunity to introduce himself to more spectators during this breakout season. Yet to understand how he got to this point, we have to go back in time to a far smaller, quieter pitch: The backyard at the Tsakiris household in Los Gatos, California, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Jose.
There, on a patch of turf their father Shaun crafted for them, Niko and his younger siblings Kai and Mateo would spend long hours of their childhood playing. Today Kai is a standout sophomore winger at the University of Tennessee; their little brother Mateo is a freshman at Clemson and has spent time with both the LA Galaxy and San Diego FC . Like Niko, both are rising youth internationals.
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"I guess you could say that [Mateo] is always the best, because we would always pick on him. So I think that's fair," said Niko with a grin, reckoning that all that defensive work against him and Kai in the backyard led his brother to become a holding midfielder. "Definitely, he's the hardest out of all of us."
Soccer wasn't the only offering. Their mother Nyssa was a gymnast, so that activity factored in significantly, as did other North American staples like football and basketball. But with Shaun having been a distinguished player in his own right – a college star and 1997 national champion at UCLA, selected by the New England Revolution in the 2001 MLS SuperDraft, a teammate of Tim Howard , Steve Cherundolo and Taylor Twellman on the US Under-20s – before becoming a high-level youth coach, it's no surprise the beautiful game was always available to the kids.
"We had a simple rule that when the sun is out, we're outside," recalled Shaun to MLSsoccer.com. "If we have some time, let's go and train together. Or if we go to the beach, we bring a ball. If we go to the park, we bring a ball. That was the case when these guys were like eight, nine, 10; just what we did. So I can't put my finger on what it was. I can absolutely put my finger on what it wasn't, and it wasn't to turn them into pros."
Niko echoes those recollections, emphasizing that dad was always dad, never a coach.
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"Growing up, it was always just dribble, have fun, enjoy. Enjoy the ball, enjoy the game. We're here to have fun. And I think I try to do that as much as I can on the field and show that," he said. "Having a guy like my dad in my corner so young, I played rec until I was 10, really, and he was just like, 'go dribble, go score, go get assists, and just have this confidence about you,' and I think it's really trickled over to who I am now as a player."
It's essential to note how another factor shaped the Tsakiris' parental approach: Shaun's battle with Stage 4 testicular cancer. As Goal.com profiled in depth earlier this year, his initial diagnosis arrived one week before Nyssa learned she was pregnant with Niko in 2004. Doctors warned the couple to prepare for the worst; one battery of tests indicated he'd be born with Down Syndrome, if he made it at all.
When Shaun beat cancer, and they eventually welcomed not just one, but three healthy children, that brush with death influenced their outlook on, well, everything.
"It totally shaped what we wanted to do and what was a priority, and it still is kind of true to today," he explained. "Everything that we do is for our kiddos, for each other. Family's just been huge for us. So dealing with what we dealt with, and then being told some of the things that we were told at that time, shifted our mindset.
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"People will ask," he continued, "What did you do with your kiddos for them to be doing what they're doing? Well, selfishly, I just wanted to spend time with them, right? And because I was working in coaching, it was like, you're coming with me."
Rising through the ranks
That remained the case even as Shaun rose through the coaching ranks, all the way up to the US youth national teams. When Niko was 10, the family relocated to Southwest Florida for a few years when Shaun worked as an assistant coach under John Hackworth in the since-shuttered Bradenton Residency Program at the IMG Academies.
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The Tsakiris kids would juggle or play small games on the sidelines, becoming familiar faces to the future stars training there as US U-17s.
"[Hackworth] would joke around that 'I didn't know that today was Bring Your Son To Work Day again,' chuckled Shaun, who today is the technical director at youth club Los Gatos United. "They would be off to the side and doing their own thing… For lack of a better term, they were just kind of junkies about it, and it was normal.
"Now looking back, no, it's not normal to be able to call Timmy Howard to say hi, or so-and-so," he added. "But he was certainly exposed to all of that."
Young Niko invited the likes of Tim Weah , Josh Sargent and Sergiño Dest to his birthday party, having gotten to know them from being around the group almost every day, going to elementary school in the mornings and visiting IMG in the afternoon.
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Shaun jokes that Indiana Vassilev , who today plays for the Philadelphia Union , still can't get his head around the fact that the little kid who'd ride on his shoulders at Bradenton Beach is now one of his midfield adversaries in MLS.
Made in MLS
Niko blossomed into a top prospect after the family returned to the Bay Area, joining the Quakes academy and becoming one of the club's youngest-ever signings at age 16. It was an era of struggle for the first team, though, and he worked under five head coaches in his first four seasons. Then there was the reality of his preferred position: Relatively few MLS clubs entrust their playmaking duties to young homegrowns, with imports and Designated Players the norm.
He obtained a Portuguese passport via his family's heritage, opening doors to clubs within the European Union, a path he contemplated seriously. Yet with his father's counsel, Tsakiris kept faith in his hometown side, bolstered by his experiences with the US youth national teams, most notably as a key contributor in the U-20s' last World Cup cycle.
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"It's been really, really cool to just compare, to say the least," he said. "OK, where am I at compared to guys from France, to guys from Argentina? Where do I fit in?
"It's been really helpful for me to come back here and then continue to train, continue to work. There's still so much more that I can do, that I can get better at."
Shaun notes with pride that Niko has a note affixed next to the light switch in his room: 'Win the day.' It became something of a mantra. Those years of daily work were rewarded last winter, when second-year boss Bruce Arena informed him he'd have a real chance to win a starting role as the linchpin of the Quakes attack.
When that was followed by the awarding of the No. 10 shirt and a U22 Initiative contract extension in February that quadrupled his wages, according to MLS Players Association documents, his chance to soar became that much more tangible.
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"As a young player, I think it does take time. And maybe from my point of view, I would have liked for it to come a little quicker. But I feel everything happens for a reason," said Tsakiris. "The timing and everything worked itself out.
"Bruce obviously has been around for quite some time and he knows the league very well. With him being who he is and the experience that he has, there was that trust at the beginning of the year from him, and that meant a lot to me."
USMNT dreams
Can he win over Mauricio Pochettino next?
Tsakiris' excellence in 2026 has not yet been enough to draw a call from the US men's national team . Tsakiris was left off the USMNT roster announced this week , but continues to dream of taking his next step at the international level, perhaps with the U-23 side former LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo will lead at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in two years' time.
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"Nothing's guaranteed, so I'm going to have to go in and earn a spot like everywhere else. But yeah," said Tsakiris, "it's definitely on my mind, and for it to be here in the States, here in LA, is an even better place to have it, here at home for us.
"It's still a ways away, but definitely on the radar."
Fair to say dad approves.
"That doesn't define you," said Shaun of this week's disappointment. "But the love of the sport and improving daily and winning the day does. So your time will come."
