San Jose Earthquakes by the numbers: The stats behind MLS' shocking league leader

Major League Soccer is home to global superstars like Lionel Messi, Thomas Muller and Son Heung-min, but its greatest current team isn't home to any of them.

The San Jose Earthquakes — a small-market franchise that finished dead last in 2024 and missed out on the playoffs in 2025 — are the first-placed team in MLS, and deservedly so. The team captured the top spot in the league after beating Austin FC, 5-1, at home on the ninth matchday of the season.

San Jose's rise against the odds, put together by an American coaching legend and a squad of hardworking domestic players, has been swift and gratifying. Here's the story of its charmed 2026, told through some of its most curious statistics:

18 - Positive goal difference

With nine games of the 34-game MLS regular season under its belt, San Jose has scored 22 goals and conceded just four for a league-leading goal difference of +18. Those four goals conceded, incidentally, set a club record for the least number of goals conceded over nine games of play.

It's a marked improvement from the team's record in 2025, where goals were plentiful but concessions were plentiful, too. Nine games into last season, San Jose had scored 19 goals but conceded a whopping 17 for a goal difference of +2.

Take things back one year more, though, and the progress becomes even more astounding. Nine games into the 2024 season, San Jose had scored 13 goals and conceded 24 for a goal difference of -11.

.83 and 5.36 - San Jose's expected goals at the end of the first half and at full time against Austin FC

San Jose's dizzying 5-1 victory over Austin FC on Matchday 9 was a blowout, but not quite the blowout it appears to be on paper. San Jose actually struggled quite a bit to find its way into the game and closed out the first half with a 1-0 deficit. The team got plenty of shots off in the opening 45 minutes, but none of them were particularly deadly: San Jose's 11 first half shots combined for an expected goal tally of just .83.

Coach Bruce Arena flipped that script at halftime. 

"I told them we needed to get a few more crosses in front of the goal, and to be more aggressive running in the penalty area," Arena said in the post-match news conference. "And we accomplished that on a couple plays."

Indeed San Jose did. Its 11 shots, 0 goals and .83 xG at halftime morphed into 37 shots, five goals and 5.6 xG at the final whistle. Arena's men cracked Austin FC open after a frustrating first half and got the win they deserved.