QUOTE SHEET
REAL SALT LAKE 1-0 MINNESOTA UNITED FC
RIO TINTO STADIUM; JUNE 17, 2017
Real Salt Lake
Head Coach Mike Petke
On the pause before the goal:
“No I haven’t gotten an explanation, not yet, and I don’t think I need an explanation right now. I turned around; I didn’t see Yura score because I turned around to the fourth official. I felt there was a great deal of calls tonight that weren’t made or called against us when they shouldn’t have been and I thought that was one more. But we got the goal in.”
On Yura performance:
“Well listen I’m not going to be totally forthcoming with my conversations I have with players in situations. To his credit, I am not a person that hides behind things but I will tell you this little tidbit. The conversations I had with Yura about not starting tonight, I told him that there is nothing I would like more than for you to come off the bench and score and then come into the office the next day, and I made it clear in the office not the field, and tell me to go you know what myself … I told you so. I would want nothing more than that and I hope he comes in tomorrow morning and slams the door and says that to me, that is the god’s honest truth. So I am glad that he got the goal, it doesn’t justify anything, it doesn’t mean anything, you know I thought Luis acquitted himself very well with his hold of play and his combination play, and Yura came on and got the goal. We are all very happy for him. And I will let you know if he comes in tomorrow.”
On heightened expectation with a full roster:
“Tonight was one game but I had options, a lot of options coming in. Players I had to leave off the 18, which has maybe happened once or twice since I have been here because we didn’t have enough. It is having options now and now it is moving forward, now I will hopefully moving forward we as a staff will be able to start putting into play more of how we want to play going forward. That is all it means, it doesn’t mean anything for next week against San Jose, it doesn’t mean anything for the weekend after having won 1-nothing. We had some good stuff going on out there”
On Savarino at the #10:
“He did exactly what we hoped he would do. So active, he is able to hold the ball, he shifts defenses just on his own by his movement and with his one-on-one abilities. He is excellent and we saw a little bit of it when Venezuela played against the (U.S.) men’s national team, when he came in centrally. But we had planned to do this before we saw him there that just kind of backed it up. And it is a good option to have even when Rusnak comes back. Changes a little bit of how we play both centrally. We are talking about a lot of things but Savarino was excellent tonight.”
On Justen Glad’s performance:
“I thought he did exceptionally, as young as he is he calmed things down defensibly for us centrally. It is a little bit of a piece that we were missing, I was excited to see him tonight because I haven’t seen him play for me once, outside of practice. The kid is wise beyond his years with his communication and experience and everything. He is comfortable with the ball and just a little intangible as a center back that I watch out there. With him reading the play and dropping at the right times, and stepping up at the right times, I think that the kid has a very bright future, but he still has to perform next week so I don’t want his head to get big. Well let me rephrase what I said. Justen is not the missing link. Alright, he is not Pique yet but I think that him with the experience that he has had with the U-20s coming off the World Cup and how he played there at that level of competition and him coming back, being young, being energetic that is definitely a spark that we needed. Moving forward it depends on Justen and how much he continues to want to push it.”
On the finishing:
“Yes, it was like Willy Wonka where you go out and buy 100,000 candy bars, and then you just casually buy one when you think all of the ticket are found and lo and behold there is one there, I think that was a good analogy. But no we had countless and countless opportunities and again you kind of start thinking “oh alright here we go at least we are not bleeding goals tonight but we are finding ways not to score and then the unlikeliest goals happened so we will take it anyway it happens. We created a lot so that is good thing, but again learning to convert is a little frustrating.”
On midfield performance:
“I said a lot my first couple weeks, I don’t want to compromise the way I want to play just to grind out a 0-0 result or only lose 1-0 compared to 3 or 4 but I will be honest after the last couple of games it got to a point where I didn’t want to get scored on anymore. So we got back a little bit, take a couple of steps back and then hopefully we will start to take steps forward. Yes we did sit back a little deeper tonight, a little deeper than I would like to and surrender possession at home but at the end of the day right now I don’t care. We won 1-0.”
On the U-20 kids bringing experience back to the RioT:
“They have to, I have talked to them, I have talked to them all and just because they played in a U-20 World Cup in a 19 or 20-year-old playing professional soccer and scoring, it doesn’t mean anything. The choice is theirs for the future. They can either have 12-15 more years playing professional soccer doing something they love or they could be the guy that after a couple of years they say, ‘What happened to that kid who had all that promise playing in the World Cup and he was starting for Salt Lake a couple of times?’ They have to be the best players every day in practice. It doesn’t matter, I don’t care how old they are or lack of experience they have. They have to come, them especially, and push it every day. Hopefully it is the start of something great for all four of them, it was great to have all four of them out on the field but it really comes down to them, they have to continue to work hard.”
On the players that are still injured coming back:
“David it is nice to have him back, Jordan Allen played 45 on Wednesday and trained today we have to see how he came out of that and Sunny two days ago went down with a calf injury so listen, at this point I am just glad to have more than 16 field players. Oh, and Demar is very close, hopefully he will get some time with the Monarchs Monday, but next Saturday hopefully. But hopefully we are back to full strength so it will be nice.”
Midfielder Luke Mulholland
On the win:
“Felt great. We had a couple of weeks since the Dallas game just to really unwind and concentrate on this game. We had the most needed break for the players and the staff, everyone, so it was nice to get away from soccer for a little bit and kind of start the next part of the season, the midseason point.”
On the chances to score going by time and time again throughout the match:
“Yeah there were definitely times where you thought it wasn’t going to our night, and it was going to be a nil-nil win all over it, but sometimes lady luck falls in our favor and I think it did tonight. We were just there with the goal that we scored. I thought their goalkeeper had a really great night and made two or three great saves where we would have definitely scored and unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us he just spilled our way and was able to pounce on that and we got to it before the keeper could and it was very happy for us tonight.”
On dominating offensively and taking that momentum going into the next match:
“How many shots did they have? (Five) That’s good. That’s definitely a positive we can take into the next game. But right now our concern is not really at home, That’s three home games in a row that we have won, so right now we’re slowly but surely turning it right back into a fortress. Our problem is need to tie up things and limit their chances that the teams are getting on us on the road, so switching formation or just our mentality switch that’s our biggest concern right now, but on the flip side of things if we can keep winning at home, then we’re going to find ourselves in a good spot by the end of the season, so right now it’s three wins in a row and we will go to San Jose this week and I think is good if we can get a result.”
Midfielder Jefferson Savarino
On playing as a midfielder:
“To be honest it’s a position that I have played before. Of course in my national team and in my previous team I always played that position as well. I felt very comfortable. I played as a midfielder as well as a 10. Again I felt comfortable and I know how to play both.”
On getting back to club play after going on international duty:
“Happy to be honest. Excited first for the team. To be honest today we had a very different attitude and thanks to God we could take the three points at the end. We could have scored more goals but oh well, that’s what God wanted and today we took the three points.”
On the opportunities against Minnesota:
“To be honest like you said, we had many opportunities. Everyone on top had the opportunity to score a goal but oh well it didn’t work out. Thank God, that Yura had that opportunity and score the goal. We were able to take those 3 points and now we just have to keep working for what is next to come.”
Defender Justen Glad
On earning the shutout:
"I think we were just really defensively organized, there was a lot of communication back there and it made it easy when they were making diagonal runs and cutting across the backline, everyone knew what was going on and we could shift with that player and they didn’t really cause any problems because of that.”
On playing alongside Aaron Maund:
“Me and Aaron have a really good connection back there and we know what each other are going to do, when we’re going to step, and when we’re going to drop and that’s huge, especially when it comes to defense. Maybe if you’re in the attack and you’re off page you can kind of have someone spark something, but when you are in the back and you’re not on the same page, one mistake and it’s a goal so being on the same page was massive for tonight.”
On first game back:
"Felt great. Obviously, love being at home fans were great all night and I had to get the W. The heart and the fight was there tonight and when we have that and a group of guys who are willing to leave everything on the field we can beat any team in this league, it doesn’t matter who it is. It was tough watching in Korea and even before that when I was injured it was tough not being able to contribute and watching how things were going, but again I think this is not the second half of the season and it can all be uphill from here."
Forward Yura Movsisyan
On getting the win:
“It’s very important for the team. Important for the morale of the team and the players. A lot of things have been said about the team and our players but we still believed in each other and everybody in this locker room believes in each other. We know that there are always tough times but it’s just a matter of how you come out of it. We’re trying to come out of difficult times and we want it more than anyone else. We’re working harder than ever to do that.”
On his goal:
“It was total confusion. I didn’t care a goal is a goal. It was right in front of me I had to put it away and a lot of times that call goes against you, and this time it went for us.”
On RSL finally finishing an opportunity:
“You have these games where you just go at it and have 20-25 shots and none of them go in so I think sometimes it’s just luck you need on your side and that’s what we needed tonight.”
Minnesota United FC
Head Coach Adrian Heath
On the goal conceded:
“Obviously, Bobby [Shuttleworth] is disappointed because he’s had a great time and every time we’ve asked him to come up with a save, he’s done it. Cruelly at the end, he makes a mistake and it’s the difference in the game. He had kept us in it with some really important saves at important times. When I look back at the 90 minutes, I don’t think we caused them too many problems. I can’t fault the effort but tonight we just weren’t good enough.”
On the team’s reaction from previous results:
“I can’t fault the players for trying this evening. I just don’t think our quality was good enough, that’s the problem. Apart from a couple of instances, Nick Rimando didn’t have much to do. I don’t think our impact players, people in the final third did enough this evening. But we go again on Wednesday because that’s the nature of it. We have to be better. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We need to dust ourselves down, look at the tape to see what was good, and try to get better.”
On Bobby Shuttleworth’s performance:
“He’s really disappointed. He just apologized to the rest of the guys because with the night that he’s had, he didn’t really deserve that. That’s the nature of being a goalkeeper, you make a mistake and it invariably ends up in the back of the net.”
Goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth
On if they were looking for a stoppage on the goal:
“Guys were putting their hand up for a hand ball. To be honest with you, the ball just rolled out of my hands and straight to them. So full responsibility is on me, I have to hold on to that ball.”
On his performance:
“It’s tough to look back on it and think about the positive right now. Giving away a goal like that so late in the game, it’s hard to take the positives, but that’s the life of a goalkeeper. If you put in a good performance and do something like that it’s pretty gutting.”
