Sounders FC 0 vs. Vancouver Whitecaps FC 1
Sigi Schmid – Sounders FC Head Coach
(Opening Statement…) “Obviously disappointed in the result. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a game we deserved to win, but it wasn’t a game we deserved to lose. A little breakdown at the end of the first half there when Manneh was off injured and came onto the field, catches us by surprise. We had some chances, but I didn’t think we had a ton of clean looks. They did a good job packing it in the back, in the middle. It really clogged up the middle of the field on us.”
(On the goal…) “Evans had gone forward with the ball and the referee lets the guy on the field. He usually doesn’t let him on the field when the ball is on the same side of the field.”
(On opposing chances…) “With the exception of the goal, and the other time they had a good counter off their speed was when Ozzie took the shot that was deflected and they came off the counter there. Outside of that, their chances came late when we took the chance with the 3-5-2 and pushed people up.”
(On why there weren’t many chances…) “It’s because they clogged up the middle.”
(On Gonzalo Pineda not starting…) “He’s still being bothered a bit by his foot, that’s why you didn’t see a lot of balls across field to open the game up, and that’s normally something he provides for us as well. At the end, obviously, the adrenaline kicked in and he started hitting free kicks and things like that.”
(On Leo Gonzalez’s performance…) “I thought Leo was solid. I didn’t think Mauro (Rosales) did much of anything.”
(On the refereeing…) “The game is always physical when Marrufo refs the game because he lets the game go. Adding time is great-and he didn’t cost us the game, don’t get me wrong; the referee did not cost us the game-but if the goalkeeper is going to do that you’ve got to card him. That’s the only way it’s going to change. It’s the time, but it’s also the momentum of the game. If you’re taking 30 seconds to every time for a goal kick, and it started in the beginning of the game, and the referee didn’t have communication pieces, so they couldn’t talk to each other, I don’t know how that happened. At the end of the day for us he allows a physical game and we have to be prepared for that.”
(On what to play for…) “We have a lot to play for. Our goals of [winning] Supporters’ Shield hasn’t changed and our goal of winning MLS Cup hasn’t changed. We might need a little bit of help from Dallas maybe, but we need to take care of business the last two games.”
(On the importance of the game…) “For them it was. They are trying to push to get in the playoffs. In fairness to them, like I said, they were very well organized and they really packed the middle of the field. We really needed to create more width, but we didn’t quite get that done, so we will move forward.”
(On areas to improve…) “To get more width. Marco (Pappa) was coming inside and the middle of the field was already crowded, there was no space in there to play and we needed to get behind their outside backs and we didn’t do a good job getting behind their outside backs the whole game.”
(On the substitutes…) “We felt (Chad) Barrett could play wing, he is a better winger than Cooper is, so that’s why we brought him on. We needed to bring in Pineda because he has good ideas to get in the flow of the game. With Andy Rose we wanted to get three in midfield and you win more balls there.”
