LA Galaxy 3, Real Salt Lake 2
Q. Wanted to know your thoughts on the game and what the last two days have meant emotionally or mentally for this club that maybe put it in this position tonight?
GREG VANNEY: First off, I'm incredibly proud of the group. Yeah, I guess there's been a lot of stuff going on, and yesterday, I would say this group, we care about everybody. Our team and our club, yesterday we lost a guy in Chris that we all care about. You know, we all feel some responsibility in that process. It's hard not to. And so as a group, we came together and we fought today, and we got a break here or there. We did the work that we needed to do. We stuck together as a group. Fought for one another. The spirit in the group was amazing. Yeah, this is not an easy place to play and we came and got one. But you know, we all are also sad that we lost a guy that means somebody to us in this process.
Q. I know it's hard to say this was a defensive game but you got some really big plays out of Calegari and out of Jalen Neal and maybe Martin, as well. What do you take away from the defensive effort on this, and then maybe talk about Tyler and Memo's goals as well:
Yeah, I thought the defensive effort being connected; this is, again, for some of our guys, they have never played here and they have never played maybe even at altitude before and don't know what that feels like. So we talked a lot in this game about being efficient in different ways, defending, not chasing when we defend, stay together. I thought we defended well. It took some plays, but we didn't keep the ball as well as we'd like to. Some of that is, again, when you're at altitude and again, you're not sure what your body is enduring sometimes that, your brain and your feet don't necessarily connect so well. I can tell you that firsthand because I played in Colorado and I went through a preseason where I couldn't complete one pass while I was adjusting to it. Sometimes when you don't really find that rhythm and guys are going through that, and sometimes you don't find as much of the ball as you would like, which means you defend a little bit more. I thought the connectedness, the effort, the plays, the individual plays that were made through the course of the day were massive. We went up a goal. We went down a goal. We went through all of the spectrum tonight and came out on top, and I thought we fought the entire time, which was the minimum standard, but we certainly met it tonight. In terms of Memo and Tyler, they were huge additions to the game and obviously had a huge impact on the game. The ability to have some fresh legs and have some guys come on at a place like this to make a difference, it's a huge pick-me-up for the guys who have been out there for 90 minutes, or however long before them, that are grinding and battling and have two guys come on and make a difference is just, again a complete team effort. I'm proud of these guys. The mentality was super strong tonight, and we are going to use this as a steppingstone. That's the idea. That's the plan, and we have got to keep repeating this effort.
Q. Going back to Tyler, the topic of him, we saw him playing with the big bandage, maybe the severity of that. And also how important, he is to this attack. We have seen the last couple games him be really influential and today he was able to cap his performance with a goal:
Yeah, first with his injury last week, I don't remember the minute but it was sometime middle second half. Kind of a weird accident. I think his hand got caught into some sort of a collision with somebody, and he didn't even really remember but I remember the moment because it was right in front of me. He thought he dislocated some fingers or something, and tended up being a broken hand. As of yesterday, I didn't think he was going to be able to play today, and so -- which is one of the reasons he didn't start. We set up the team and prepared the team, and he saw a hand specialist that basically told him in the end: You're not going to make it any worse, so if you can tolerate the pain, then you can play. We'll see how it heals, and if it heals -- if it starts healing the right way, you won't have to have surgery. If we are not seeing the right healing, you might have to have surgery. Tyler said -- he came into my office which was after training and said, "I'm ready to play." And so how do you keep that guy out? And then he shows up today and he gets a goal. What he's meant for our attack is he's given us threats in so many different ways. He's gotten into great crossing positions. He's given us stretch, the guy who can get in behind. He's given us great crosses. Today he gets in an interchange and ends up on the back post to tap one in. I feel like he's just a guy for us that gives us something a little different on the dynamic side. We have got a lot of guys who take the ball to their feet; they play between the lines, and Tyler is a guy who we desperately need. And it looks so different because he will play behind the back line and he's making these dynamic runs that go through lines and not just in front of lines. And so, you know, he's a big piece, and that's why a lot of our danger is able to -- he's a big part of a lot of the dangerous moments that we create.
Q. You touched upon it earlier, how proud you are of this team. We've seen a lot of times them go down and maybe sometimes it feels like they get too emotional or try too hard but today they seemed like they were put apart. What does it mean to you as a coach see them pull out a win when it seems like there might be no points to come out of this game:
Look, every season when it starts is the beginning of like a new life, a new journey, and you don't know where it's going to go. You sometimes don't know what you're going to deal with. There are things you can control. There are things you can't control. This group has encountered many, many -- many, many sort of circumstances that aren't beyond their control. Some of them are happening. Some of them are life. Some of them happen inside our group, around our group. We haven't gotten results that we wanted to get. Some we felt we should have got; some we didn't. Some we let go. But what we talked about this week is you're never too far away. If you can let the last game go and focus on the next game, and not let the last game impact your performance in the next game. You know, one of the things about the MLS in the regular season, especially early on, is it can be forgiving. If you can find your footing and you can find yourself and you can get on to some sort of a run and you can build some consistency, many teams have won championship, Seattle, right in their mix, of teams that have had terrible starts and lifted trophies at the end. Again, it's not allowing our emotions, it's not allowing the disappointment, it's not allowing some of the circumstances that have infected the team to overwhelm us or to take us into a place that we don't want to be. And you know, this week and yesterday and today, I had a lot of reflection because of things that happened. And so it brought some things that I said to the guys today, it brought some things in really clear focus for me, and you know, I helped to bring that into the guys tonight and I thought they were fantastic.
Q. To that point, you mentioned losing Chris being tough, somebody who has been part of the team. I wanted to know, what's your approach as a head coach, how do you deal with that in a tough stretch being able to get the team ready for things that you guys have already mentioned, not being able to get goals on the road, maybe not being able to rally in certain games? What is the approach you took in getting that clarity that you mentioned and do you feel like it does ease up a little bit of that pressure that was being put on you guys initially to start the season:
My approach always after every game and as I said to the guys, is that in life or in sport or professionally or whatever, there are certain times where there are situations or circumstances that make you really think about things and reflect on things differently. For me there was a lot of things in my head going on and yesterday a lot of things came into really clear focus for me. To be able to take that and translate that with the guys into some really clear focus for the day, I think helped them. I think they were all reflecting on the situation. Maybe that helped to bring some focus and reality and some of those things inside the group. You never know. But what I'll say is every one of these guys and all of us, we like Chris. We liked him as a person. In many ways, he was a part of our group, as I said before. We all internalize it in our own way and we all used it in a way that helped us get a result tonight, and hopefully it's a platform for this group to build and team moving forward. That's the idea. I saw a different version of us tonight that I thought was special and can do some things.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports