New York City FC 3, Toronto FC 0
Q. Your team took an early punch today and gave up another goal at stoppage time for the second game in a row. What were your thoughts on the performance, and what do you say to your team after a day like this?
TERRY DUNFIELD: Yeah, it's been a long week for sure. What I said to the group was in key moments, we weren't able to execute. We knew New York City had quality, and they punished us for two really difficult turnovers, and -- in key moments of the first half, right at the start of the second half and at halftime, we spoke about not letting this get away from us, and yeah, the guys went out in the second half and were professional. I thought New York City's third goal was a well-worked goal.
Q. Curious about the decision to start Luka today. What was the thinking behind that and what you made of his performance overall?
Yeah, I thought Luka was excellent today. I think his presence and profile helps for sure on the penalty safe. I thought his distribution was good. So no, I think he can be proud of his performance. Unfortunately on his debut, you want to be leaving the changing room with a nice feeling and three points but he's worked his ass off for that opportunity, and been patient, as well and we've been just waiting for the right moment to give him his debut.
Q. Wanted to get your thoughts on conceding the goal just before halftime. Did it make your halftime talk a little bit more difficult for the squad?
Yeah, I thought we reacted well to going one nil down and handling the punch to a degree. I think what made the second goal difficult was the turnover in midfield where there was a pass to play forward, and now New York City are down our necks.
But at halftime, there was some great leadership from Michael Bradley. He did most of the speaking and then I got into a couple of the details tactically.
Q. What was the story with Lorenzo, and is this latest injury, is it related to other injuries, or I guess people are wondering about his overall health?
Yeah, he felt some tightness at the end of the Inter Miami game. He's had a couple scans in the last couple of days that we're assessing but there's still some soreness, lower leg soreness.
Q. I know you're not a doctor but does this seem to be from like one thing or is it just a slate of different things?
Probably play the I'm-Not-the-Doctor card here.
But this particular injury I think came from just a load of the match against Inter Miami and he started to just feel soreness in the last five minutes, five, ten minutes of the game and signalled to the bench. We're assessing from there.
Q. And if I can just ask another one, obviously you were expecting to play yesterday. What was that like? Was it difficult? Was it easy enough to kind of reload and re-prepare for today? What was it like?
I thought the extra, I guess, 18 hours worked in our favor. It gave some of our vets a little bit more time to recover from Inter Miami. It was a tough travel day, too, leading into Inter Miami. We were stuck on the Tarmac for close to four hours.
So no, I think everyone woke up a little bit fresher this morning, and it also gave us a little bit more time to just move on from the heaviness of the 4-0 defeat against Inter Miami.
But just a shoutout to our operational team. They were first class, and it was pretty seamless, to be fair. But it was, what the heck, we're not playing? We quickly put together a training session last night.
Q. We have talked about the need to stay professional at times like this, but this part of the year, a campaign like this, it's also about evaluating guys for next season. What are you trying to see from these guys in these past few matches and the next few coming up?
Yeah, I think my role as the interim head coach is to analyze our group as best we can with three games in seven days, the opposition that we're playing, and put together an 11 and a subs plan that can hopefully bring back three points. I think big picture, that's more of a question right now for our front office that our -- that we'll be analyzing as well as John Herdman and his staff.
But right now, we are in the fight and we're trying to recover from games, preview the next game, set up for success, and then go and compete. That's the process we're living right now. But it's difficult when you concede the types of goals that we concede or maybe not as clinical as when the opportunities do present themselves.
Q. Just to follow up, you mentioned when we talked on Friday about the need to be professional and no excuses. Were you happy with the level of professionalism you saw from your players today?
Yeah, I'd say the group kept going. I would say we were naïve in certain moments for sure. But no, I thought that -- that we kept going. But I'm disappointed for sure in -- in the result, and I still think that those difficult moments at the start of the first half and the end of the second half defined the game, and again, in between, there was some nice football, and I think that that's probably the -- how you could paraphrase my tenure.
Q. I think everyone appreciates that winning on the road in MLS is really hard but this team especially has had great difficulty getting result as way from BMO Field. Have you seen anything why results have been so few and far between away from BMO Field?
I think big picture, you can talk about the travel, the different conditions, the different playing surfaces, the vary wants in style of play that make it tough to win on the road, and then I think internally with a little bit more time, we can do a little bit more of an audit on how we can do better to change that record when we have time in the off-season.
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FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports