Minnesota 3, St Louis 1
JOHN HACKWORTH: Yeah I'm knot going to say much to open it up. Disappointed. It's clear that locker room, we're all feeling that disappointment. We believe that we could come into this game and not only win the game but put on a really good performance and for a lot of crazy reasons that happen in a game sometimes, it didn't happen for us and we lost the soccer game.
Q. You get probably what you're looking for with that early goal, but was there a lack of crispness, passes didn't seem to be going where they were going in leads?
JOHN HACKWORTH: If you look at the halftime stats, there was not really, except for a bad mistake, there wasn't problems there.
So if we don't give up that goal, then we're probably talking about a completely different feeling at halftime. But we have to go into halftime tide and answer multiple questions. We had two guys that didn't come back out of the locker room and that was really tough.
But I don't think -- I do think Minnesota is a good team and they took away a lot of space. In particular they took a lot of penetrating passes away from us and we probably played into that a little bit not figuring out how to break them down as well as we should have. But again, we get the early goal and you think we're going to be in good place, and we certainly were for a long time.
Q. With Kessler and Durkin, what happened?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I don't exactly know what's going on with Chris. He felt his knee early in the half and continued to play it. When he played the long diagonal, felt like he felt something again. I know him well enough to know that he would do anything to come back out of the locker room and be on the field and he couldn't.
With Kess, he takes a knock, goes through the concussion protocol and looks okay and went back into the concussion protocol at halftime and just not worth the risk.
Q. And the VAR rulings, not to put you in Caleb Porter's position, but when the ball comes, the ruling off Kyle, did that look like last week in New England?
JOHN HACKWORTH: This one, I will say this: If I just look at that play and I look at it in slow motion, okay, I can understand how they call a hand ball. I can.
I don't understand how VAR doesn't give us the penalty to me later on and seems to me, or at least I was told multiple times that VAR rebound given a penalty and it wasn't given. That's pretty interesting.
Q. Score a goal in the fourth minute, you're on top and feels like the team is buzzing, and then Minnesota comes back. What were you looking for in the response from the club after Minnesota tied that you didn't see that you hoped to see?
JOHN HACKWORTH: Give them credit. They made it difficult for us to find the ball in really good spots in the attacking third. But you know, we created a number of chances in that first half after we scored the goal.
So again, if we don't give one up, we are probably talking -- having a much different halftime conversation. If we don't have two of our starters not be able to come back on the field at halftime, it's a totally different situation as well.
Obviously you can't give up the second one. That's just another issue that we have continued all year long, giving up too many goals, and that was one that really hurt. Because this allows a team that's really good at getting behind the ball and frustrating you, it allowed them that opportunity to be in the lead.
Q. The idea of playing with Simon and Klauss together up top, what is your thought? Was the idea to play with a false nine or one of them to move towards the sidelines?
JOHN HACKWORTH: The idea is they are similar but they are very different. Klauss, he likes to hold the ball up. He likes to come back into the midfield and we thought with both of them on the field and in particular how they played last week, that we could get a really good -- hopefully Simon runs off of Klauss in the moments where he could and we got some of that. We got it early in the game with some really good runs in behind and we were playing more direct.
But the idea was to see if we could get both of them to do what they do and do it well. And did it work out perfectly? We are never going to know because we never had the game in our hands the way we needed to have it after coming out of the locker room.
Q. On the same thing with the positioning of the team, a lot of shifting in the first half, torn playing in spots, Hartel different spots, Löwen continues to operate more on the right. Is it a risky formation considering how much communication has to go into the switching and changing and fluidity there was in the lineup?
JOHN HACKWORTH: We made literally one change from last week. One change. And we put Klauss on the field.
So I don't think it was risky at all. I think we had to come here and win a game and I put out a team that is very attacking minded and a team that offers a lot of mobility, and for the start of the game, I think we kicked their ass.
So it was working. It didn't work for the whole game but I'll take all the responsibility for that one because I think it was a good lineup. I think the guys worked their ass off in training all week and we were well prepared for this. But it didn't happen.
Q. In the first half, Simon pushing up as a striker with Klauss and also Marcel siding more centrally with Cedric almost creating a 4-2-2-2 formation, do you feel that gave a greater chance attacking-wise?
JOHN HACKWORTH: We thought against a Minnesota team, especially when they play on the road, they are sitting in a very tight block.
We thought our mobility and movement with those four players would really give them fits, and as I said already, I thought it worked really well for a long time in that first half. I thought it worked the whole first half to be fair but you know, we had a mistake where we give back a goal. Otherwise I don't think we are having this conversation the same way.
Q. With sliding Marcel more centrally, we had Horn come up as covering like the left wing part. Had a was super smart play attacking-wise. Do you feel that helped the play attacking-wise?
JOHN HACKWORTH: That was by design. If you look at how Minnesota plays, we thought if we put that box, if you will, in the middle of the field, we were going to really get moments for Jannes to get moments and for Jake to get forward, and that happened a lot.
Had some excellent opportunities from both of them. I don't think we found Jannes enough in the first half. I thought for some reason he's over there wide open numerous times and we didn't find him that. Was certainly a fault of ours. The way it was working looked pretty good.
Q. The back line in the second half was probably not a group that's work together before.
JOHN HACKWORTH: Nope.
Q. Was there a lack of communication there on that second goal? They had not been out there, seven minutes into the half.
JOHN HACKWORTH: Yeah, I mean, look, it's a breakdown and a missed -- I'll have to go back and look at it again but I really feel like we had our back line shifts and we had a player who we thought could have won the ball; didn't.
When Jannes gets one versus one in that situation, I think he tried to take a foul. I wish he would have taken more of a foul and then we would have given up a restart and maybe given up a yellow card and that might have been it.
Now we're scramming as we are to get back in the box and it looked like Jayden was going to clear that ball, and he thought he actually did. So just one of those things. Very unlucky on our part and we have to own it.
But I do think it wasn't a perfect back line, and it wasn't a group that has played a lot together, at all. When we are in the locker room at 1-1, I'm trying to think of how to get attacking players into the game because we have to win it. So we erred on the side of trying to make the least amount of changes possible, bringing Jannes in, bringing JGR on for Durkin and trying to see if we get Jayden high on that side and still Jake high on the other.
Q. I wanted to ask about Jake, as well. Circumstances made it necessary for him to come in and play those important minutes. But it was important half for him and how do you think he did playing in the midfield?
JOHN HACKWORTH: I thought he did well. We've been impressed with him every time he steps on the field. We have been good in that area of the field between Edu and Durkin. Edu and Durkin have a really good relationships, so it limited amount of times we could get JGR on the field. I thought he played well.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports