Orlando City 1, Toronto 0
Q. Seemed like your team deserved a better feat than today. What was your thought of the performance and can you give us your take on what happened?
ALEX BONO: Yeah, we deserved some sort of result today, not the one that we got. But such is the game. Sometimes when you learn lessons, you learn them the harsh way.
Ordinary corner kick. Whips into the near post. Just kind of beats our first guy and he gets a flick on it, before I can really set myself, it's already going the other way. Yeah, it hurts, especially being the second game in a row where we give up a shutout really late, that's definitely painful for me I know, and for the rest of the guys. We're disappointed about that. We work the whole 90 minutes and then comes down to one play and we just don't quite execute and teams that are strong on set pieces, teams that have big guys and ability in the box can punish you. That's what happened for us today. Got to get back up on that horse. We have a lot of games left. We have a lot of games left. We still have a lot of lessons to learn, and so from our perspective, we take what we can from it and move on to the next one. Keep chugging along.
Q. You guys have been pretty well shorthanded every game in the season. Is that getting kind of old and are you sort of wishing to get some of your veterans back or reinforcements?
ALEX BONO: Yeah, of course, and we've caught the bug a bit more than other teams at this point in the season. But at the end of the day, one thing I will say is guys on short notice, finding out they are going to be in the 11, guys coming off the bench, guys who are called upon came out and did their jobs and I thought for a long stretch of that game, we had the better of the chances. We had pretty good run of the play. Defended really well. I thought that the guys that were asked to step in today did a fantastic job. We can talk about shorthanded. We can talk about veterans. We can talk about young guys all we want, but at the end of the day throughout the course of the season, you need guys to step up and whether it be at the beginning, middle or end, all throughout or never, you're going to need to call on people.
Today I thought we had guys that came in and did a great job. So the narrative of shorthanded, yeah, we can play that. But at the end of the day when you're called upon, you know, we've got to expect that guys can pull their weight and that guys next to them can help them out and bring them along and they can do a real job for us. Today, I thought that was definitely the case.
Q. It's been a long time since the team's last clean sheet. How much is that weighing for you that you haven't been able to get over the finish line?
ALEX BONO: A lot. It's frustrating, obviously, when as a group we have within expectation. Personally, an expectation that -- a team that's difficult to score against. Sometimes when it debts down towards the end of the game, 0-0 end to end, we just have to make the plays. Two games in a row now where we have had legitimate chances to have shutouts, yeah. Keeps me up at night. It really weighs on me that we give up goals the way we do sometimes. It can be frustrating as a group. You work for 90 minutes and it comes down to one play and that's the way the game is. We all know that. I live on shutouts, so the fact that we haven't had one in a while is slowly killing me.
Q. Even if you have a good game yourself?
ALEX BONO: Don't give a s--- about that. All I care about is at the end of the day we put points on the table as a group, we can walk into the locker room and be proud of each other we can look at the guy next to us and say we gave it all, you know. And the guys today, I think everyone came into the locker room and said, listen, we gave it our all, and a lapse or a good play, and that's the way it goes.
I don't give a s--- about personal achievements, personal games, saves. I'd rather have nothing to do and get a shutout, win 4-0, than have a 0-0 draw where I make a few saves and a couple crosses. I don't care about that. I don't care.
Q. How are you? You seemed pretty banged up when you limped up in here.
ALEX BONO: Trials and tribulations of the season. Sore spots. Little knocks. Nothing.
Q. What's the vibe in the locker room? Seemed seem to be a chatty place right now?
ALEX BONO: No. Usually it's not after a loss of any kind but obviously the fashion in which we loss, thinking that the score line could have been switched to the other way, it's disappointing but again, at the end of the day we have, I don't know how many games left we have off the top of your head, 23, 22, something like that? We're a of the way through, we're not even close to halfway through. So we have to try and stay positive, as frustrating as it is. The lessons we are learning along the way we have to take with us and be better because of them. And I firmly believe, you know, the locker room is never going to give up on us. The guys are not going to give up on each other? The only thing we have to do is dig ourselves out one play at a time, one minute at a time, one game at a time, one training day at a time.
You know, the thought in there, I don't know if this will be -- I don't know if I should say this, but you know, we said, hey, maybe you'd like to take two days, let's clear our heads, and resoundingly, everybody said no. Let's get back to work. Let's take our day and let's get back to training on Monday. Let's get back to work, and really as a group individually dig ourselves out of the tough rut that we are in. So if that doesn't tell you, you know, guys are just not going to take a day off. We are in there. We are working. Our trying our hardest to get ourselves out. We don't like losing, obviously. People don't like watching us lose. Losing sucks. So it's not the time to give up. It the time to double down. It's the time to come in and work and make sure that we have the same feeling a few times throughout the rest of the season.
DraftScripts by ASAP Sports
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports