St. Louis 2, L.A. Galaxy 1
JOHN HACKWORTH: I just told the boys in there that I'm really proud of them. Coming off of last week, their coaching staff really did put the team through a lot of work but it wasn't like the kind of work that is a punishment. It was just what we needed collectively to fix things, and whether Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you guys know, incredibly hot. Incredibly humid and they didn't flinch one bit.
The group believes in themselves and we continue to make improvements. I'm proud of their performance today. I don't think it means we're back. We still have areas we have to improve but at the same time I want to celebrate this, and then get back to work so we can hopefully have another good performance in New England next week.
Q. The way the crowd react the at the end of the game and the way you guys felt at the end of the game, has not been that way a lot of times this year. Does it feel almost like last year with the way everything went?
JOHN HACKWORTH: Totally different situation and I personally know those guys can do that game-in, game-out. I said it to the Elvir and Mitch and Alex when we were on the bench, hey, let's not act like this is not expected. We expect this. We've been talking about it, from pregame and yesterday, we believe we can do this. Now the next step is to continue to do it. You have to to have that belief in yourself.
Last week I sat in front of the monitor and answered your questions and I was miserable. You know, absolutely miserable, distraught. I couldn't believe -- frustration is an easy word. Didn't explain the way I was feeling.
I'm satisfied this week but I don't think that this is the end of it. We want more. We have more to improve on. I think L.A. is an excellent team. It's a bonus when you can perform the way we did against a team like that -- but again I'm answering too long.
I think we were ready for this.
Q. Talk about the team's resolve after giving up the lead and going even to come back.
JOHN HACKWORTH: What a terrible halftime talk I must have given. You know, like, wow. But to your point, the resolve was great and I think you saw a little bit of that belief. After we give that one up, go back to the team and watch Cello. He's shaking everyone's is hand and trying to lift them up. You can see that we are trying to a true team trying to get everybody's backs in a moments when it would have been easy for people to put their head down like oh, it's going to happen us again. We didn't do that. Those little things are massive.
Q. You guys had a season-low of seven fouls committed. The last time that happened was September 30th last year against sporting Kansas City.
JOHN HACKWORTH: How do you pull that out? That's amazing, by the way.
Q. Was there a game plan of trying to be more cautious or do you think they just played a cleaner game?
JOHN HACKWORTH: A little bit of both. You know, L.A. is so good, you have to respect what they try to do. And for us, we needed to go put pressure on the ball, but we needed to have cover behind. And that meant that we couldn't be as aggressive as sometimes we normally are because if you're too aggressive against them, they just play through you.
So it doesn't work. And we had to change that. We spent a lot of time this week practicing that, and that's probably one reason.
I also think the officiating was really good today. Rarely will you ever hear me complement an official or staff but I thought they did a good job. It felt like two teams going at each other both of us were trying to change tactics in game, and it was the players that were in control of that.
So from that standpoint, really nice, and thanks for the amazing stats.
Q. With Marcel and Cedric, are they exceeding your expectations in their ability to create and ultimately to finish?
JOHN HACKWORTH: Not really. We brought them here because we knew their quality. Really nice when you get two finishes like that out of players that when we were recruiting them and scouting them, we saw it again and again. You know, Lutz has intimate knowledge of how those guys have pros sed in their careers and that's what we expect from them, and can we do more of that.
I don't want to temper the fact that it's really good goals. In particular I love the first one because it's off us executing a press, Nerwinski stepping out of the right back position into a center midfielder position to win the ball and the transition is excellent.
The second one is just a great ball by Jayden after not serving such a good ball previous to that and a wonderful finish. So it's really nice, and if you're going to beat the Galaxy, you have to have guys that contribute goals like that.
Q. The fullback battle, you said midweek it was a tough conversation to have. Jake, you talked about his defensive output. Can you speak about him slowing down Paintsil?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I don't know if you guys know but his wife gave birth to their second daughter on Thursday. So the biggest decision I was making with Jake was like how much sleep did you get; are you going to be able to play 90 minutes.
And he was great. I really can't commend all of our guys but the example of tots and Jake and Akil kind of battling all week, like they just kept on pushing each other in training. You know, whether it wasn't Jake today, I absolutely believe Tots would have done a great job in that same role and he's been so good for us all year. A little different.
Jake is more of an experienced, stay-at-home defender where Tots loves to get forward. We made that tweak knowing we had to with Reus and Paintsil. They have some attacking weapons. Really proud of Jake and all that he's done in the last couple of days for sure.
Q. On the other side, Jayden comes in off the bench and has that immediate impact.
JOHN HACKWORTH: You get an assist, you come in. The best play for me that Jayden made was when he was a little out of position and they crossed it to the back host and he battled and got that little flick that went out for a corner. I would have strangled him if he'd given up that goal, not really but would have been quite upset.
Instead he makes that moment. You can watch him grow, last week, two weeks ago, we were not making that play. Happy for him, too. That depth is so great on a day like today when you know January issue put it all out there. He left everything on the field. He was telling me at halftime, "I might have five minutes left, I might have ten."
I said, "You're going at least 15." There's no question. His little time out after he got the yellow card and was hurt gave him a second wind and nice to get that performance out of both outside backs, and having Jayden coming off the bench, huge. Great assist.
Q. With Marcel and Cedric, how much more is that opening up your offense?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I mean, think about this. We brought Klaus onto the field. We brought Ras on to the field. New York have I came on to the feel. These are guys, it's been a long time since I look down the bench and have those kind of weapons to bring on to the game especially late.
But from the minute they got here, Cedi and Cello have been contributing and changing the way that we play and being an attacking felt like it, it's really nice to have on your team.
Q. How do you go about rebuilding belief? How do you approach that?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I probably couldn't write a book on it because I'm not that good at it. I think you have to have a mentality every single day about what you're doing and a belief that you're doing the right things. It's easy to say, you work hard. But it's working efficiently and working smartly and having a group that sees the little incremental advancements that you're making. This team could have made a choice a couple weeks ago, and you know, not gone in the direction that we are right now, and we have choose en, despite having games like Club Ameríca or last week where you could lose that belief really quick and we never did that.
It's a credit to the guys in that locker room because it comes from leadership, it comes from the coaches trying to constantly push the guys but also believe in them and the more do you that, the more you get that feeling of confidence and belief. There's a lot more too. It.
Q. The guys played together and pulled off the win but from a coaching standpoint, what do you think strategically helped?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I would be critical of us going up a goal and then kind of being too passive. I felt like I was watching last week again. I wanted to pull my hair out and these guys are trying to kill me with gray hair and a heart attack.
Because what we didn't do, did a little different this week, was -- and it was nice that we had a water break in the first half, we were able to make an adjustment and say, we got to get stepped out and put pressure on them. If we just sit back, we are going to give L.A. so many chances.
In the second half, despite my halftime talk that was not so good and giving up a goal right away, I thought we were in really good defensive shape and I think that was the difference tactically to where we were today to win the game versus last week.
Q. Did you have any special strategies to shut down Marco Reus?
JOHN HACKWORTH: The word was that Reus was not going to play any more than 30 minutes. Him and Roman are really tight and he BS'd him all week and told me he was only playing 30 minutes. I would say our midfield three, we put Durkin in the six and did an unbelievable job, and I do bring Cedric in front of him and later we put Cello in the middle. We got a lot of contributions out of our center midfield and that was a big difference.
Q. Eduard, you seem to be dropping him back deeper to play with the defensive line but also more so than his usual left hand spot, you guys are dropping him to the right side more and running things. Is it trying to get more of a balance that you're usually so left side heavy or is interest another reason why you've dropped him and played him more on the right side than unusual?
JOHN HACKWORTH: Well, today we pushed him up higher and because when we push him up higher he started higher especially defensively and a dude does what a dude does, I use the word
cook. He cooks. He goes to find the ball and we understand when we get Edu the ball good things happen for all of us, you can see the understanding of the players and sometimes like today, the space was on to pull more to the right.
He likes to go to your left, but today was more on to come to the right and he did that and then he saw Durkin and Cedi make a little shift. I like that when you can get that midfield triangle understanding their own movement that it's not coming from me necessarily. It's the players understanding their relationships.
Q. Speaking of a left/right switch, when Thor came on, what was your thought process on the flip?
JOHN HACKWORTH: On the land side I needed a guy like Cello who can literally go up and down. They were trying to overload us from the start with Fagúndez and Johnny Nelson -- I should give Johnny a shoutout, he played a great game. I told him so afterwards. Great to see him.
Like they were overloading us and bringing Fagúndez inside and pushing Johnny almost like a wind -- and Jake did a good job. When I brought Nökkvi on, I thought Cello would be a better option for that. We switched sides and Nökkvi became on and opens the space for our second goal. That's nice. When I brought Ras on, I moved Cello to the middle and we had options again, really nice to be able to make those adjustments in-game and particularly when it works.
Q. Beating the leader in the Western Conference, what confidence does this give the team moving forward?
JOHN HACKWORTH: It means so much because we are learning how to win a game that last week we didn't know how to win. We are doing it and we are problem solving our way through with solutions that we talk about all week, and implementing those in a game like today.
I'll give you an example. At the water break in the second half, like Henry comes over and just starts screaming at nobody but everybody, hey, remember what we talked about: Kill the game with the ball, get the next goal. He's been here for two weeks and having that influence. You can see that you have to do it ultimately, and today we did that, and now we have the confidence that we can do it again and get better.
Next week is different. This league is unbelievably tough. There's so much parity but happy for the advances and steps we are making.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports