Seattle 1-2 Columbus
Sigi Schmid – Sounders FC Head Coach
(On thought on games…) “Disappointed in the final result, I think our group deserves better than that tonight. I thought we had some really good chances in the first half we could have maybe gotten another goal in the first half that would have made the game a little easier. Certainly the penalty kick and the red card becomes a crucial play and you know then at that point they are a pretty good possession team then it’s a little bit hard to chase it. Even then we got forward a couple times and then at the end of the game we didn’t’ react well. We had an issue with the referee, but we didn’t react well.”
(On if he thought final play had been stopped…) “Usually the referee positions himself outside the 18 when a corner kick is taken, I rarely see a referee’s position almost inside the 6 yard box, so it looked like he was talking to our players and if you’re talking to our players, why do you let the ball get played? Then he’s back pedaling and if the ball had been swung in and he was in no position to make the call in the melee so. He had done that earlier in the game as well where he talked to one of our players and he let the quick free kick; you can’t do that. If you’re going to talk to one of our players then you got to stop the play. But that doesn’t make an excuse for us for falling asleep and still more players need to pay attention there so we don’t get caught.”
(On Djimi Traore’s red card…) “I didn’t see it. I talked to some people who said he kicked him from behind. It’s double jeopardy. Is it a penalty and red card or is it a penalty and a yellow? I saw a goalkeeper today in the game sit on a player outside a box and it was only a yellow card, where the goalkeeper was the last man, I think, so why is that a yellow and why is that a red? I don’t know.”
(On Sounders FC first-half play…) “We did what we thought we’d be able to do. We knew that they like to spread the field and they spread their players on the field and that when you can intercept passes you can get at them pretty quickly and the flank areas are open because their outside backs are up so high and obviously we got the goal off that kind of play. [Kenny] Cooper had another good look. Lamar [Neagle] had a really good look, as well. So those chances we needed to make sure that we bury those. In the first half it went the way we expected it to go. We had good opportunities and we expected the second half to continue to go that way.”
(On playing with 10 men…) “I thought we handled it OK for the most part, tried to get some fresh legs on with Sean Okoli and Leo Gonzalez, and had to make the switch with [Jalil] Anibaba so we could get back to our four in the back. So I thought we handled it OK. We were getting forward at times. Obafemi [Martins] had done a lot of work. [Lamar] Neagle had done a lot of work so we tried to get them out so we could get some fresh legs, but obviously the last 10 seconds were not good.”
(On Brad Evans…) “Brad wasn’t ready to play tonight. His calf is still bothering him at this point.”
(On Micheal Azira’s play…) “I thought Azira was fine. I thought Azira played well. Again I thought the three midfielders, Osvaldo [Alonso], Azira, and [Gonzalo] Pineda were good.”
(On Gonzalo Pineda’s play…) “He’s good with the ball, he’s got good vision, he finds people, hit a couple of good free kicks and corners today. We were unlucky on [Chad] Marshall’s header in the second half late off the one free kick, and found him in the one corner in the first half on the back post as well. Hopefully that will get better as we move forward.”
