Minnesota 1, St Louis 0
BRADLEY CARNELL: Good evening, yeah, we're not superhuman after all. Credit to the boys, though. Credit to Minnesota United. Come here away from home and set up a really tight defensive structure, and something that we knew they were going into the game with and something that we tried to plan and prepare for. But yeah, really credit to Minnesota, Adrian has done a magnificent job and good start.
Yeah, just really proud of my boys. The way they have handle the last five, six weeks, plus the six weeks of preseason, the willingness to grow and adapt and just to achieve great things as a group and to come out of the blocks flying. And we wanted to be competitive from day one; I think we have proven that fact, and yeah, we've got work to do, obviously.
So we are excited about what the future brings, and yeah, we can't wait to get back to work on Monday.
Q. The second half, it looked like things weren't lining up right, they were coming at you more offensively and you couldn't click on the chances at the other end.
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, look, there's few reasons for that, right, playing with the double striker system that they put out. Some of our second balls, we lose some of these second balls in these transition moments, and then it just creates a bit of a defensive transition and a lot of running for us in the wrong direction. So we like to defends forwards and on the front foot, and too many times tonight we were backtracking. Really off the pace, stepping back off the opponent. Not decisive enough in certainly moments.
Yeah, listen, they challenged us, right, which was a good challenge and we move on and we learn from these moments.
Q. The penalty kick that they got, what did you see?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I have look back into it. I saw -- sliding into Jake Nerwinski. I think he cleans out Jake Nerwinski, I'm not sure, maybe the striker was an innocent bystander. I'm not sure what happened there. I'd just have to look at that. Those guys said they cleaned each other out. I'm not sure how that resulted into a penalty, but if it is, then it is, and it's a strange one.
Q. This first loss was going to come at some point, so next week, will you change anything in the way you approach the week or will it be something similar to the first five games where you guys kind of forget about everything and prepare for the game?
BRADLEY CARNELL: No, we have never just forgot about everything. We have always tried to plan and prepare and get one step better than we were yesterday.
So while the week might look the same from the preparation and what we do, nothing changes our desire to get better as a team every single day. So yes, we lose a game but yeah, that's what it is. We lost a game.
So next week, we go, the score line is back at zero. We go to Seattle with energy, renewed energy, and now we're in the League, right. Everyone knows a little bit of something about us and now it's up to us to respond.
Q. You guys started the game with that 4-4-2 and made a substitution and it looked like the shape changed. What was the reason for that?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, exactly what Tom asked us, right, it's a little bit of pressure on our back line we just thought we needed the security of one extra six, and that's why Njabulo came in the game. We just try to create some good moments in the transition. We try to still keep numbers in the box and we try to still squeeze the game without losing the game.
We didn't want to expose ourselves, and we thought the structure that we went to would help us in these certain moments. And then we knew as the game went on, obviously as the picture perfect storybook would go, you bring in Aziel Jackson. It's his previous club, and so unfortunately the storyboard did not pan out that way, but those were definitely the intentions.
Q. So switched your midfielders and Blom was the center, basically?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, Blom is the holder midfielder -- but two eights and one ten striker so 4-1-3-2. You could call it diamond midfield, yeah.
Q. I'm not a rules expert but usually a guy getting kicked in the face on the way to a goal, were you expecting a penalty there when Klauss got kicked?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Maybe should you ask those questions to the other officials. I'm not sure. I don't want to get involved in that.
Q. What can you learn after a loss? You seem to respond well to wins. What can you learn after that first defeat?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I thought we were a goal down, and then we started to bring a bit of energy, right. I thought that was lacking a little bit of energy. There was a little bit of something and we got a goal down and all of a sudden Klauss gets kicked in the face and then we had a power play for a couple of minutes.
Yeah, we just are trying to keep the fire, the burning fire was a little bit missing early on in the game and yeah, maybe it starts to weigh in on the boys.
That's the thing, that's the beauty or the nature of beast, right. You're successful. The boys know at some point this thing has to change, right. It's just human nature and these boys are not robots and yeah, we are just human beings after all.
Q. Wanted to ask you about Tim Parker, can you describe the intensity you saw out of him tonight?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Wonderful, yeah, Tim Parker, the whole back line, I thought Johnny Nelson was excellent. Johnny Nelson 1v1 depending was really, really good. Tim Parker on the back line; Kyle Hiebert come up big in the first half with a bit sliding tackle.
So the back line was yet again very impressive. Like I said in the opening statement, we give away one shot on target, which is the penalty, and then you lose the game. So that's just the way it is sometimes, and we'll get better from this. We'll learn from this, and yeah, again, we're excited about the future.
We are enjoying this journey, and yeah, nothing more to say about that.
Q. I was going to ask you about Tim Parker. What did you see in him tonight? To me he seemed like the guy that was keyed in and was making big play after big play?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I mean, Tim, I would say our style rewords Tim's profile, right. He's fearless; he's brave; he can take a tackle; he can make a tackle. He sets a certain tone and energy for us to feed and thrive off of.
Yeah, Tim has been a model, a roam since day one since coming into this group. It's great to see him back to the Tim Parker I know from 2018. So yeah, it's on us and on him to keep this thing going. And now there's a lot of leadership required, right, just to make sure that the heads don't drop and we walk out of this building with our head held up high and our chest out.
That was the message to the boys out there. I said we've arrived in the League and people know about us in the League. We've been competitive, we are competitive, and we are not done yet.
Q. AZ Jackson, you said not a fairy tale ending, but how did he handle himself out there?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Good. AZ brings a live wire mentality. He tries to make a play. Sometimes good or bad but he tries to make a lot of action happen. So that was the intention, whether we played him out on the right, whether we played him central in the ten. You could see in tight spaces, and this was again to -- our priority to tight spaces, and you could see certain qualities; when he's on his game, he's almost unstoppable. We have seen it many, many times in training.
Yeah, we are rooting for AZ and we hope he has a good progress with us and just to stay the course and trust the process.
Q. Sam Adeniran came really close, but just hasn't been able to get on frame in the right place.
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, he has some good experiences at the USL level and we have been urging Sam to obviously get himself into good spots, to work hard, to make those runs. And you saw tonight in certain moments, can be a real threat in behind, so especially when Klauss occupies the back line, Boxall did a great job on Klauss, as well, today and credit again to them.
But then I thought we needed an extra body out there, right, so with Gio a little bit more underneath as the ten at times; and as I thought the game progressed we would have been a little bit more threatening with the double-striker system with two strikers and getting a cross and getting in the momentum, getting in the final thirds and creating your own luck, almost; it nearly paid off for us.
Yeah, I'm bummed for Sam because he deserves a goal.
Q. The kick in the first half, corner sick, got a lot of shots but other than Löwen's --
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, on the crossbar, hits a cross bar and those are game changers, right. Obviously they plan all week to drop off and we create a few moments in that first half where we could have taken the lead. We don't take the lead and they grow in confidence. We start over -- not saying overthinking it, but if we start now just to decide, hmmm, do we need to do this, do we need to do that.
So that's why we try to mix things up a little bit in that second half just to like almost reboot the system with a couple of new ideas. But yeah, credit to Minnesota again.
Q. It seems like you guys average a lot of shots inside the box but in this one you looked pretty limited. Is that a testament to Minnesota's low block? You guys had a lot of possessions, but just couldn't get through to get the shots in the box.
BRADLEY CARNELL: I think we had maybe five to eight percent less than what we've averaged on the year. So I don't think we've had too much possession. Today we had 55 percent which is not a ton of possessions. It's not like we had 75 percent and we just passed a goal from left to right on the midfield line.
Yes, we like to have shots and we like to force our luck and we like to get corner kicks and we like to force the issue. Today we just, you know, I worked with Kemar Lawrence a lot previously; athletic back line, really aggressive.
They were up for it for sure. You could see from a physicality standpoint and athletic standpoint, yeah, they matched us and posed certain challenges. That's another area for us to look at and grow from there.
Q. 50/50 balls, they seemed to be getting most of the 50/50 balls. Did it strike you that way?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, that's what I said in my opening statement, the second ball, right. When I referred to the second ball, I spoke about the 50/50 balls.
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