Real Salt Lake
Real Salt Lake Head Coach Jason Kreis
On the difficulty of playing without his first 11 due to national team call-ups and injuries…
“We absolutely we miss those guys. But, I have to say, I’m impressed with how well the rest of the guys did. I thought Lovel [Palmer], Cole [Grossman] and Josh Saunders all had solid games. We made a lot of shifts and I thought the team took it quite well. I’m really happy about the effort. I’m disappointed in the result but I am pretty pleased with the guys’ fight tonight.”
On the team’s first half performance…
“We were absolutely, absolutely fortunate in the first half to not give up any goals. We didn’t let anything up in the first half and in the second half we gave up the goal. Then the game changes, and we immediately find a scoring opportunity. [FC Dallas GK] Chris Seitz did a fantastic job to save that [chance in the 77th minute]. Then [FCD DF Matt Hedges] was able to deflect that chance from Devon [Sandoval]. If we score that goal, maybe it was a different game.”
On playing against FC Dallas…
“First and foremost, it’s really important to make them defend. If you allow them to go at you all night, you are going to be struggling. We all noticed that they come at you extremely quickly. I didn’t think we were good enough with the ball in their half of the field. We stretched ourselves out at times, just playing too high with our forwards and giving too much space in the midfield.”
Real Salt Lake GK Josh Saunders
On what changed in the final 20 minutes…
“Just quality for me a little bit… I feel like I didn’t put my best effort out there towards the end of the game. You have to stand up to what quality you can give, and I got beat high on the first goal, and then the second one was just such a lapse in pace to get the ball out of the box, and I take responsibility for that.”
On Dallas’s second goal…
“I just took a bad touch and didn’t make the correct decision to clear it out.”
On playing without so many players due to injuries and international call-ups…
“Yeah, you know depleted or not, we’re still out there, we are here to do a job and whoever you put on the field you expect them to do enough. We kept it scoreless for so long and we created some good chances to maybe get a goal, even hit the [post]. Their goalkeeper made a good save, and then their defender cleared the ball off the line. So, the game could have shifted at that point, but it didn’t and the ball did not bounce our way today.”
Real Salt Lake FW Devon Sandoval
On Matt Hedges’ goal-saving clearance on his 77th minute shot…
“Robbie [Findley] had an awesome individual play, made a really good effort and [Chris Seitz] made a save. I was following up the play and I saw an open net. I tried tucking it away and then I saw [Matt Hedges] coming in and blocking it. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I had it. I just need to learn from that and move on. You need to have a short memory as a forward and put the next one away.
