SAN JOSE — It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

By year four of his professional career, Earthquakes midfielder Tommy Thompson was supposed to be an MLS star, a talisman for one of the best teams in the league, a generational playmaking machine, and a fixture on the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team’s roster.

That’s what you would have been led to believe when Thompson signed with the Earthquakes as the team’s first-ever homegrown player after one year at Indiana University.

Instead, Thompson has shown little more than flashes of that prodigious talent, more often with San Jose’s minor league affiliates than with the big-league club. He has one MLS goal to his name.

But don’t label Thompson a bust.

Perhaps it’s taken a while, but the 22-year-old midfielder might get to that point of stardom so many envisioned for him just yet.

When the Quakes open the 2018 season with a game against Minnesota United at Avaya Stadium Saturday, they’ll also be beginning a new era for the franchise.

Gone is the overly pragmatic, direct, downright English (sorry, but it’s true) style of soccer coaches Mark Watson and Dom Kinnear. In its place comes an attacking, pressing style championed by new coach Mikael Stahre.

These Earthquakes are poised to look nothing like the teams you’ve seen over the last five years.

Thank goodness.

“We threw away the old playbook,” striker Chris Wondolowski, who is entering his 10th year with the Earthquakes told me earlier this week. “We have quality that I have not seen on this San Jose team since I’ve been here.”

And Thompson, so far, appears to the player benefitting most from the big change.

“I feel like the coaching staff believes in me — it’s a special feeling. I step on the field and I’m comfortable,” Thompson said. “This is the happiest I’ve been — I feel like part of this organization.”

Thompson had a huge preseason for the Quakes, using the freedom afforded by Stahre’s new system to come inside on attacks from the right wing to score a brace against LA Galaxy and notch an assist against Real Salt Lake. While a starting spot is not guaranteed, the consensus is clear that for the first time as a professional, Thompson more than earned regular selection to the first team.

“I think there’s a lot of freedom,” Thompson said. He’s not criticizing anyone for making a mistake — he encourages players to be creative. I think what results from that is a more appealing product on the field and the creative players being more comfortable in expressing themselves. That’s exciting. That’s something that I’m not familiar with — and that’s why I’ve done well in the preseason, so far.”

Thompson lacked the size and defensive aptitude for Kinnear’s system, which didn’t allow for much, if any, freelancing or flash — Thompson’s forte. The result were tumultuous seasons where a missed cross or turnover could land the midfielder on the bench for weeks.

But things started to change for Thompson last June, when Kinnear was fired by then-first-year general manager Jesse Fioranelli (formerly of AS Roma). Chris Leitch, the Earthquakes’ technical director, took over as the interim head coach and quickly installed a more attacking system, and, as someone who oversaw Thompson’s development from the time Thompson joined the team’s academy as a youth player, put Thompson in a more familiar central attacking position.

Behind the new style and with Thompson’s help, the Earthquakes made a buccaneering run to the MLS Cup playoffs last season.

And while Leitch was not retained as head coach (he remains the team’s technical director), the Earthquakes brass clearly liked what they saw from the attacking style and decided to push it even further with the hiring of Stahre.

The significance of that decision is not lost on Thompson, who is one of three players on the Quakes who was on the team in 2014. (At 22, that longevity makes him a veteran.) He understands that the Earthquakes organization, in a way, is placing another bet on him.

“I wake up excited every day right now to play soccer. I’m comfortable,” Thompson said.

But the slights that have come his way — both from coaches and outside observers — have not been forgotten.

“Coming in, all I cared about was attacking, so I’m grateful for the coaches that have shown me what else I needed to learn, and I’m just going to continue to try to learn as much as I possibly can,” Thompson said, while efforting to avoid “throwing anyone under the bus.”

“I had a lot to learn as a soccer player and I had a lot to learn as a person… It’s funny how the media writes this script where [they] make a young player out to be a failure if they haven’t done X, Y, and Z… I never saw myself as a failure. Someones people write their own scripts, but I had the blessing of not caring what they think.

A professional career is long and winding, and I’m really in a good place right now.”

Time will only tell if Thompson can lead the new-look, new-energy Earthquakes to a similarly good place this season.