Quote Sheet
Real Salt Lake 1-5 Los Angeles Football Club
Rio Tinto Stadium; Sandy, Utah
March 10, 2018
Real Salt Lake
Head Coach Mike Petke
On being unable to adjust:
“Why weren’t we able to adjust this game? Listen, I’m not going to answer very many questions. I’m going to answer the same thing. All right? The thing that I’m going to be saying is I apologize to my owner. A lot of places in the world, I’d either be fired right now or I would resign. A lot of places in the world. It’s embarrassing. And it starts from the top. I apologize to the fans who came out here for this. At the end of the day, it’s my job to get the team ready to play. And put the effort in. That’s my job description, and I did not fulfill that today. So I’m not going to answer what happened, what‘s this, what’s that. It was an anomaly. It was not representative of who I am as a person, as a coach. It’s not representative of what this organization is. It’s not representative of who these players are. So, I apologize.”
Is this a game where you just move on?
“I have no idea. I can’t answer that right now. Perhaps a little bit later I’ll answer that.”
On when things lost control:
“There were a lot of plays and a lot of situations, that in my mind looking back on, that were just not right, and that’s the best that I can do right now. Again, it falls on me, so I’m going to look at the replay, and then I’ll be able to talk more about it probably next week.”
On urgency:
“I just think that this is an anomaly. I can’t process it at the moment. I know you want headlines. I know you want me to—which I don’t blame you—you want me to say something out of character or blow up, and I honestly can’t do that at this moment. Urgency, effort, yeah you could throw all those things in there. But at the end of the day, we prepared all week. Everything from tactics, from reviewing how they play, to how we want to play, to how my practices run—the intensity. It all falls back on my shoulders. I got it wrong somewhere, to be honest with you. And that’s why we’re going to go back starting tomorrow, and we’re going to rethink certain things, and move forward to the Red Bull game.”
On what was going through his mind at the end of the match:
“If you knew what was going through my mind, if you just stepped into my mind, you’d have your headlines. So, what do you do at the point, you know? We made a number of adjustments; we sent papers out onto the field, to be very clear about certain things. And it just, it was one of those days, I guess. And I feel terrible to say something like that because it just seems dismissive—‘one of those days’—but I’m not ready at this moment to analyze this game. It’s that much of a shock to all of us. So, again, next week I’ll have more.”
Defender Demar Phillips
On LAFC’s attack:
“Actually their movements were pretty good. We started a little bit slow even though we got the lead, but I think our reaction was pretty poor today. It was just overall we weren’t good enough. There’s no two ways about it, we just weren’t good enough today.”
On adjustments in the match:
“When we got down, we went with three in the back trying to push the attack a little bit more going forward, but apparently it didn’t work that well – we conceded three more goals. We just have to move past this. It was a tough one today. To be fair, at the end of it all, I don’t think we were good enough and we just have to accept that and move on and look forward to the next game.”
On moving on:
“As a soccer player these days happen sometimes. No one is perfect. Sometimes we have a bad day and I think today was one of those days. It’s tough.”
On what you learn from this type of match:
“It’s a wake-up call, man. It’s a wake-up call. We just have to look forward to this week coming, put some work in, and focus on the next game. It’s a wake-up call.”
Midfielder Albert Rusnak
On what was working well for LAFC:
“I mean it happened through the whole 90 minutes not just the first half. We go one-up at home. That is ideal. Then all of the sudden everything just falls apart. I don’t really have an explanation of what happened yet, but it was just, it was horrendous. If I’m one of the fans I’m thinking about if I’m coming to next week’s game or not. It’s just not acceptable for a home opener to go this kind of way. After having a great preseason and playing a lot of good games and not just by the result, but I mean as in the playing style. And a good game on the road against Dallas, and all of the sudden we come home and we are strong at home. And we do this kind of performance, it is unacceptable.”
On the energy from the home side in the beginning stages of the match:
“We scored a goal, as I said, and that just brings confidence and everything else; all the things it brings up, and then a couple minutes later we go 1-1 and then from then on every attack they had I felt like they were going to score. They missed an open goal at 2-1. It could have been a lot worse today than it actually was. That’s probably hard to imagine, being worse than a 5-1 defeat at home. Today nothing was good. Defending wasn’t good, the attacking wasn’t good, the movement wasn’t good, we were second to everything. It was the perfect example of a bad performance from a team.”
On not meeting preseason expectations with this first match:
“Yeah that’s why I don’t really have an explanation, like I said, because we haven’t done anything like this for a long time. Even at the end of last year we put in good performances and then we picked up a point in Dallas on top of that. Then, we come here and do this. It’s, I don’t know, we have to watch the tape all-together and then go through the mistakes because there were a lot of mistakes that were made today. And they punished us for almost every single one. They were dynamic, they were fast up top, their movement was very good, and it caused us all sorts of trouble. We conceded five goals and if you concede five goals you aren’t going to win.”
On why RSL had a tough time adjusting:
“That’s the thing. We watched their tapes. We watched how they played in preseason and how they played against Seattle and we knew their movement up top. Their three guys make the runs behind our back line and the first three or four goals were exactly the same. We watched the tapes all week and we worked on it all week, and then it’s a shame that we couldn’t figure it out and stop them from doing these things that we knew they were going to do. It was nothing new to us. It’s not like they came out with something new. They came out with what we expected, but we just didn’t adjust in time.”
On why RSL struggled so badly this match:
“Once we went 2-1 behind, all they did was sat behind the ball. We were pushing it more and more forward, and then every time we lost the ball they were in on a counter-attack. Once you allow these teams to go 2-1 up at your house it is easy for them to sit back and wait for mistakes. And if we try to score two goals to win a game, because we play to win, you’re going to lose the ball up top. We did that today. Then every counter-attack they were in on a goal. So, I mean, after going 1-0 up, we shouldn’t just allow the other team to be 2-1 up before even halftime goes up. Once they went 2-1 up, they were comfortable just waiting for our mistakes, and then every time we lost the ball they hit us on a counter and they hit us good.”
LAFC
Head Coach Bob Bradley:
On the altitude:
“Yeah there’s moments when the guys feel a little bit bugged, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to play football, so on that end, a lot of good things.”
On going down 1-0 after RSL’s goal:
“The first 10 minutes were good. The next 10 minutes we got pushed deep and gave up the penalty, but I think we responded really well, started to make some really good passes and finished the game in a really good way.”
On what went well for the team:
“I think a lot of guys played well. That when we went down, was no frustration. It was just the confidence to get back to playing our game and try to let our football get us going again.”
On getting two straight wins:
“We work in a good way and we think that we have good players and every week we try to make our football better, so look it’s two weeks in and we’re not going to go crazy, but we’re happy today that we could follow up the win in Seattle with a different kind of win today. So that part we’re pleased with. Now there’s weeks off with a (bye) and international break and we keep trying to push ourselves.”
On the offense:
“Today we had a lot of chances, and I still was pleased in certain moments of when to shoot, when to pass, so I think you see players who are unselfish and try to make the right decisions.”
Defender Steven Beitashour
On getting the win in Salt Lake City:
”The team is very excited right now. it was a great performance from back to front I think everyone worked hard. It’s a tough place to play with the altitude, the home crowd, it’s their home opener so we’re very proud of everyone and we got a good result from it.
On Diego Rossi:
“Diego has been great. He’s a fantastic player. There’s a reason we brought him here. He’s young, energetic, when he gets in front of goal he’s pretty clinical. We’re giving him a hard time for that open goal he missed but he’s a big part of this team. We’re glad he did what he did.”
On falling behind early:
“The mindset that we have to continue to play football, we’re a good team and we can’t get nervous or panic because there’s still a lot of time after that first goal for RSL. When we got the first goal we knew we were back in it and we wanted to keep our foot on the gas. If you go back to that game against Seattle we scored the first goal and we stopped playing football. We took our foot off the gas a little too much. That’s something Bob expressed during the week that if we get an opportunity like last week we have to continue to push and be aggressive in a smart manner. Like we saw tonight and fortunately we were able to finish our chances.”
Forward Carlos Vela (translated from Spanish)
On getting six points from two matches:
“We were talking about starting the game well outside of our home because we know this league is competitive if you don’t fight hard and not get good results (away) you’ll stay at the bottom but I think this moment, I think the team is very happy. But we know there’s much to get better at. We’re a new team and have to stay on this path.”
On his first MLS goal:
“It was very important to help the team in goals and assists and overall good play. I think that’s why they brought me here and I’m happy our debut has gone well.”
On the game:
“I think they started off good, playing at home of course they were pushing hard. Once they scored the goal they stayed back and that’s when our team changed the game and started looking for the opponents goal every play. They were confident they were winning against a new team and all of that combined for us to have a good game.”
On what winning the first two matches means for LAFC:
“We are on a good path these two wins are good for us. It gives us calm to put work in and build a better team. We have to continue and work hard.”
