L.A. Galaxy 3, San Jose 1.
Q. Your general thoughts on the game, how important you think the team maybe was in transition, I know we talked about transitions a lot last year, and what does Paintsil bring to you guys after the second game here?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think you're right. I think the transition play was certainly a big part of the game tonight. Obviously in transition, just his speed and his quality in the open field, obviously speed gets us going. And Ricky's speed and quickness on the dribble and ability to carry and speed all that gets us going in transition. I thought we had some big important moments in that way tonight.
I think as we get going, we'll start to establish a little more patience through games in the possessions and stuff. But it's hard to turn down some of these opportunities with so much space and the breakouts and the guys that we have running. It's hard to turn down the opportunities to try to turn those into goals.
But they played an important role tonight.
What does Joseph bring us? He's, again, quality wide, danger -- goal-scoring threat. Goals from wide positions. It's going to be difficult to try to clog up the middle, and it's going to be hard for seems to send fullbacks forward and try to load us on sides where he can break out, and it's a whole new danger that we haven't seen or we haven't had. Over the course of time and especially on the road, you've got to be able to win games different ways. It's not always going to be easy moving through loads of possessions and breaking down the opposition scoring goals. Sometimes it's go going to be having to defend -- audio -- to score goals to put teams away.
Tonight I thought the effort was great from the guys. The game got stretched at times. If they don't finish in the back of the net or goal kicks, the game gets opened up. There were moments where the game was stretched out, but we were certainly dangerous in the moments where we got going and they weren't able to, and came out on top.
Q. Stanford Stadium, you were telling me about how difficult it was playing with two DBs -- how would you evaluate his performance today?
Again, having the only guy who really isn't healthy and here for us right now is Jalen Neal. Right now everybody else is healthy and available. We are integrating guys who didn't get a ton of preseason minutes but we are getting them going. It's having the diversity type of players that we have in our group this year, just it makes us a much better team that fits together a little bit better because we are able to control games in the middle of the field, get across field which is what our midfielders can do for us
But we have so much pace on the outside with Joseph and obviously as Jalen gets going, as well. We just have different threats and those guys as you saw with Dan's goals in the last two games, he's got two and two now, and a lot of that is because of our stretch and our speed, and we are able to get to within the lines and we are able to get behind the opposition and he's going to get essentially two tap-ins in two games because of it.
Again, we have more layers to our team. We have more ways to be dangerous. The group is doing a good job of staying connected and work together on the defensive side, which is something we had to be better than we were last year just defensively.
Again we've become a hard team too play against because we have multiple ways we can hurt you and it becomes, what are you going to take away and how are we going to play off of that. So it's good, we have options off the bench, too, and guys that came in and gave good minutes. It was good to get Johnny going. Gabriel got more minutes. We're kind of slow rolling into this thing, but as soon as we get back, and get moving, and you know, hopefully we can get Jalen healthy and stay healthy, and then we'll have a full complement of our group, which is not something we had last year.
Q. This was a very comprehensive win; where does this rank among the victories?
It's so hard to say. What's nice is we came off of a good performance last week at home against a good team in Miami. Then we backed it up again with a good performance tonight, a good road performance.
So what I take away from it is just the consistency that we have been able to put together in a very short amount of time with this season, a home game and then having a road game and playing at a consistent level, showing a consistent threat on the attacking side. I think our nets-g last week was three and a half and then we put in three this week.
This team is going to continue to get better. It's going to continue to grow together. Guys are going to continue to get used to the nuances that each of them brings to the group and so this win, it's just important to get the first one under our belt, too. Last year it took us a while to get the first one and it felt like with everything going on, the pressure just kept mounting on the team.
So to get the first win and the first three points under your belt, it builds momentum early in the season, which is precious in our league. Like I said to the guys, keep building off of this. We've got to go to another difficult place next week and play and try to build off these two performances and try to take something from that one, as well.
Q. The first month and a half, you've faced several teams -- inaudible -- you said something to the effect of what we're seeing the last ten games, and this year it seems like the first ten games, is it a better indicator -- anything you're looking at as a benchmark to see how you guys stack up?
Not really. For me and the group this year, it's just one game at a time, and you know, we have a tough start because we had Miami first which is obviously a tough game and then I think we have like eight of the next 14 or so, 13 on the road.
So this is going to be a challenging start for us. So to come here in San Jose on the first road game and to pick up three points is huge for the group because we have a number of road games still in front of us that we have to take care of in the stretch. So learning how to win on the road and get results on the road is going to be big.
I just don't -- I don't look across the league and see too many games that are going to be easy. I just think our group has to be ready to like I said them up and compete hard every single night and every single game. So we are just looking one game at a time and trying to improve upon the performances as we keep moving forward. It's still a process and it's still just keep trying to improve as the season progresses and make some decisions. The games will start to pick up in May and we'll have to pray a really heavy schedule in May and it will challenge our depth and we want to use the first six to eight weeks to build the group and get everybody firing.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports