Columbus 2, Toronto FC 1
Q. Alejandro, can you tell us how good it felt to be back on the pitch again playing and how difficult was it to be watching for so long without being able to play?
ALEJANDRO POZUELO: Yeah, I feel very good. I work a lot for play today because when I was injured, it's like a bad injury. The doctor is a little bit shared. They say like eight, ten week, but I work a lot with the physio, with Chello, like my physio, and I work a lot to be more with the team and possible. It's difficult to see the team with injury and on the TV. But like I say, I work a lot to help the team and I'm very happy. I feel very good that this is the most important I feel good after the game. I need to be physically better but when I start playing more game for sure it's good. But the most important, I don't feel pain and we need to keep going.
Q. This team has gone through a lot having to relocate, all the injuries, including yourself, and now some problems with Jozy Altidore, what is the mood on the team now? Struggled to get wins and now headed into the international break. How do the players on the team feel right now?
ALEJANDRO POZUELO: We feel good. We protect the coach. I know the team like the coach. I like the coach. What you said, we was a lot of difficult situations, like when we was in Toronto with the quarantine, after we need to come back to Orlando, we play our way up home. A lot of bad situation, like a lot of injured players, about the quarantine, training and after training again, and this is the situation.
But now, we have like three weeks free to recover the people, to recover all the players, and we need to keep going. This is the mentality. We protect the coach. We know all the reasons we want this coach because he have good mentality and evident good personality and he is very good guy, and personality, I protect him when he -- if he stay here, because I like the style he play. He want to play, press higher, he want to take the ball, and when he's here, we need to protect him and all the players want him.
So we need to keep going, recover all the play, and look forward.
Q. From what you've seen, what's your opinion as to why the team has struggled on the pitch to get results, aside from injuries?
ALEJANDRO POZUELO: Yeah, I said before, we have a lot of bad situations, a lot of important players on the team including Mavinga with injuries, now Yeferson has come with injury. The situation we had, we come to Toronto where we have to be quarantine after start training and we come to Orlando, different weather, hot. A lot of difficult situation for the team, and we need to keep going like I said. Now we have more of the players ready and this three weeks free is very important us to get the players ready for the next part of the season.
Q. We didn't get a chance yet to see you guys together but what are your thoughts on playing with Yeferson in training, if you have had that opportunity yet?
ALEJANDRO POZUELO: Yeah, I want to play with good players, and he good player. So I'm very, very happy to play with him because I know, or you know, he can play good. We can play together. He's very smart player. He's fast. He come play one, two with me or with Mike, with Marco. We have good team and we have good players and we need to look forward and we need to have personality and we need to keep working. The rest is coming.
In the second half, I think we played very good and we had a lot of chances and we played from behind. This is what we need. We need to have confidence. We need to play with passion, with personality and we need to keep going forward, yeah, for sure.
Q. Forgive me if you've addressed this already, but you're just coming off the injury. What are your plans for the break? What are your plans or the time off? Are you going to take time off yourself or will you be in training for the most part?
ALEJANDRO POZUELO: No, I need to train. I need to prepare myself for after the three weeks. Like you know, my wife is pregnant. She is in Spain. I go to Spain for a few days. So I have time foresee my family, my kids. Normally she in one, two, three weeks, the baby is coming. So I go see my family and time for recovery and after, I need to come back to play again to look forward. Yeah, I need to be ready.
DraftScripts by ASAP Sports
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports