Seattle Sounders 2-0 Real Salt Lake
Sigi Schmid – Sounders FC Head Coach
(On thoughts of the game…) “Obviously we were very pleased with the result. I thought we came out and played very well the first 15, 20 minutes in the game, which is one of the things we talked about-coming out with good energy, good enthusiasm carrying into the game tonight. We had the goal, as well. I thought we were a little unfortunate not to get a few more goals in the first and some in the second half with some of the breakaways we had. I think we bent, but we didn’t give up a lot of chances to them with things that were clean or clear cut. I was very pleased with our team’s effort and performance today and we kept on, kept climbing and now we’re in first place and now we got to make sure to stay there and enjoy the view a little bit.”
(On the steady climb to the top of the standings…) “I always believe and the guys in the locker room always believe that sometimes things bounce your way and sometimes they don’t. Those bounces have started to even up a little bit, but the guys continue to work hard. The commitment to defending is something we had already talked about a couple times after the game and got another shutout today. You never know what other teams are going to do, how many points they are going to accumulate, so all we can control is the points we can accumulate. We got to get those games in hand, we got to win those points, and we got to continue to win at home. Maybe our away record isn’t as good as it was last year, but certainly our home record is making up for it”
(On a dominant win over a tough team…) “It’s a boost for us, for sure. There were people out there that were till doubting us a little bit, saying, ‘Oh, well they beat Chivas and they aren’t in the playoff hunt or this team, Columbus, and they aren’t in the playoff hunt,’ and things like that. Last time I looked everyone plays the same competition throughout the season, so somewhere that all evens out. I felt very confident we could play well against Salt Lake. I felt in Salt Lake, the second game, I thought we were unlucky. I thought we played fairly well, but we took goals at bad times-right before halftime and right after halftime-but we were actually in the game the whole time. Today we did a good job of executing our game.”
(On choosing to bring Dempsey and Johnson off the bench…) “Obviously that was a decision we made. With the minutes that Clint (Dempsey) had played and the minutes Eddie (Johnson) had on Tuesday, and I think you saw Beckerman out there for 90 minutes and he’s a very, very good player and I don’t think today was a normal game for him, I think there was a little bit of fatigue. So we decided, ‘Hey, we’ve been in a good run and they are a little bit tired, let’s use them off the bench today.’ We knew they would participate and help us. Clint was unlucky with a couple of good chances and Eddie was almost in there as well a couple of times. Andy (Rose) could have had him late in there and just missed the pass. It just shows the depth of our team.”
(On figuring out the best tactics with Dempsey…) “Obviously we still got to work on it and see how it’s all going to look when they are all on the field. That’s something we get a few days to train on and we can sort of see which way will be the best way because we need to have the right balance. But I thought they did a good job. Obviously the other team is trying to get in the game, they are playing with more energy towards the end there, but I thought when we got ahold of the ball in the last 20 minutes, (if we were) a little more clinical at times, a little more balance here and there and we could have had some great goals.”
(On the formation…) “Amoeba. We can describe it as ‘the amoeba.’ It floats around, do whatever you want. They went into a 4-3-3 at halftime. They switched from a 4-4-2 and into a 4-3-3 so we started to do a 4-3-3 as well. We had Eddie go to the right side. Lamar (Neagle) went to the left. Oba (Martins) played up top. Clint was maybe more advanced than we would have liked defensively, but offensively he found some good spaces in there. I think they are versatile enough and there is enough hard work there-you saw Oba’s work rate-that they can place change with each other, one guy goes out wide and the other goes in the middle, I think those things can get done.”
(On the game plan…)”We had talked about one of the things that we could exploit is getting out wide. We had talked there was space for our outside backs, and we had talked we could play combination from the outside. The first goal came from breaking from the left combination and the second one with DeAndre (Yedlin) breaking through on the right. It was exactly we felt we could out of them a little bit and it paid off with two goals.”
