LA Galaxy 2, Atlanta United 0
Q. So with Marco, was the 60-minute mark what you were looking for going into this game, and how do you see him impacting the game? He played a big role in the win here tonight.
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, our target was right around 60, 55, 60. Yeah, I thought he came in and he brought just class, composure. Intelligence, only. Quality. Yeah, a lot of things. I mean, in a way, he made things look a little bit easy at times where it's just smooth and in the flow and in the rhythm of the game and just picking things out. I thought it was great.
I think in talking to him coming into this game, he feels like he's 60 to 70 percent of where he wants to be fitness-wise because he has not got much in terms of team training time. We have to be progressive with how many minutes we give him.
Hopefully getting a full week of team training under his belt going into next week, he'll be further along for sure. Again you just see his quality out on the field and his pedigree is there. It's pretty clear to see. It's exciting. You get Riqui who is buzzing around and Marco who is calculating his spaces and what the play is going to look like, and it's an interesting combination. It unlocked him at the end.
I felt like they did a lot of work for 60 minutes because we had the ball so much, and the ball was moving a lot. I felt like they had to do a lot of defensive work and spaces started to open up a little bit more and pockets and opportunities started to open up, and then we were able to take advantage of those with the quality and the decisions down the stretch.
So it was nice. It was nice to see them out there. I wanted to see Gastón out there as well in that pivot position. So we kind of got there as the game progressed.
Q. The challenge you guys are facing now with Marco, getting everybody on the field, playing time, you swapped out three of our midfield there. What was the thinking process there?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day we are not going to be able to get everybody on the field who has quality. But that's what happens when you have a good team and a deep team is certain guys on certain days are going to have to come in and impact the game. And you see the guys that came in, made the difference in the end and the guys who set up the game, they set it up for the guys who came in to win it. And that's what you're going to need if you're going to be a team that's going to compete for a championship; you have to be able to impact games for 90 minutes, and you have to have guys that can come in and change the game.
So it creates some competition. It also creates different profiles. Marco is a different profile than Marc. When Joe goes to the outside and Miggy comes on, we've got a true nine on and Joe went to more of his natural position. When Gastón came on, it was some fresh legs, and Gastón's qualities which are a little different than Eddie.
So it's nice because we have options, and that's great. You know, if these guys strive to compete to win a Cup, they need each other and we need every one of these guys and everybody has to be ready when called upon to do the job. It was nice to see that happen tonight.
Q. Seemed like with Marco out there, it lifted everybody else, as well. Like he makes the players around him better. Your thoughts?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think it was an exciting moment. Obviously as I said, when you have the quality, the pedigree, all those things, guys are excited to play. You see his immediate impact, but also the stadium starts to lift up again.
It had been 60 minutes of 0-0, and we had just missed a penalty a couple minutes before. There may be this feeling like is it going to happen or not happen tonight. And now you bring on Marco Reus, and the crowd gets going again and the energy level picks up, and with Gastón and Miggy. Just everything started to pick up in tempo, and whatever you want to -- hope in the stadium, everything. Energy started to pick up and guys started to go. I think all of those things contribute to that.
Q. Your thoughts on the first 60 minutes and the defensive performance throughout.
GREG VANNEY: Well, I thought in general we were good with the ball. I think we ended up with 70 percent -- just over 70 percent possession. We were pretty good with the ball. With 70 percent possession, as we said in the first half, we need to create and finish more attacks in dangerous areas.
Sometimes we were almost getting there and then turning back out and keeping possession and more numbers were behind, and we were, I think, you know, trying to get Joe is not a natural nine. So he's sliding over getting involved in plays and getting areas where he's comfortable with. And so a little bit of it was us being a little bit more, for ourselves, a little more predictable and a little more certain when we were going to look to finish attack so that we could get guys in front of the goal and get people in -- it becomes when you pass so much, it becomes a little uncertain for the guys who are trying to get in front of the box when the play is actually going to end and when to get there.
We talked about this at halftime, creating a little more certainty. When we do good in good areas, to whip balls in the back line or cut back crosses or set guys up for shots. We need to do that. We can't turn out and put more passes together. You can if you're up two or three nothing, you can consider that, but not at 0-0 and you're trying to get on top of the game.
But I did feel like for the most part, you know, when you have 70 percent possession, you can lose balls in bad areas that really can hurt you the other way and I felt like we minimized those. We had a couple but we didn't have a lot of them.
I think our pass completion was over 90 percent which means we are not just losing the balls carelessly and putting ourselves in bad situations. I thought our counter pressing was better on the day. We were more aggressive to disrupt their exit passes. I thought our reactions in that was better. You know, we had a couple moments that we had to deal with. Overall, I thought it was better and because you have 70 percent you're only defending 30 percent of the game and then you have got to deal with those 30 percent moments.
I didn't think they created a ton of chances inside of their set possessions. A couple where they maybe had little transitions and a couple off side calls that I'm glad they were off side. I think they were calculated by our team but I'm not sure. I have to look back.
So overall I'm happy with the performance, especially coming off of a little bit of a longer break to have a reasonably sharp -- it's a very sharp performance after a couple weeks off is a good sign.
Q. I know Scott asked about on the defensive side. Maya seemed like he had an excellent night. The breaks seems to have done him really well. What did you see from him tonight?
GREG VANNEY: I also agree, I thought he had a very good night. I think the break was important for a few guys, especially Maya who played a ton of minutes in the first part of the season and just getting a little chance to recover, catch his breath. But I thought he had a very solid night, very clean night.
Yeah, I thought he led from the back. I thought it was all very solid. So a refreshed Maya is good for us for sure and I thought Jalen had a solid night through much of the night. Some things that we've been working on with him were better tonight. I thought John Nelson had a strong showing over on the left side. I thought he had a really great night in terms of again solid in possession. His defending was excellent. I thought he had a great night.
Q. With Joseph Paintsil's penalty missed, you guys have missed four penalties this season. Are we going to get another change up?
GREG VANNEY: You very much could. So I'll leave that to solve after tonight. But yeah, we can't miss penalties. It's too important, especially when you are talking, okay, we got away with it tonight. Maybe we can get away with it another night. You're not going to get away with it in the playoffs. You're not going to get away with it in big games.
We have to bury those at a much higher percentage than we have. We'll address that. We have a new guy in town. Maybe he's a penalty kicker. We'll see. We'll address it.
Q. Do you feel that now you have -- with Marco coming in, do you feel like as the manager who has helped piece this all together that you have the complete squad?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think we have a very good team. We have options. We've got to get healthy. Continue to get healthy so that we can get Julian back and get a little more healthy on that left side so it's not John all the time every single time. You know, Martín, it's important that he gets a little bit healthy just so we have his experience down the stretch as well. Dejan, obviously to get our nine that's back into the mix.
So just when you look at it on paper, I'm really happy with the group. Collectively we certainly, you can see that we have some incredible attacking pieces. So it's going to be our collective defending that is going to determine it for us. That's the thing that we all, while our group loves to attack and has some beautiful attacks, we all have to really grind and lift up and roll up our sleeves, and every one of us has to be ready to defend and compete on the defensive side. Because that's going to be important as we play some of these teams that are also strong in the attack but defend well. Teams that are hard to score against and then have transitions that are powerful, those are teams that we've got to be able to take care of business on the defending side.
Q. You touched on that combination between Riqui and Marco. How much is that a glimpse of what's to come in the sense of their vision, their understanding, the type of players that they are and their quality and how that will impact the team?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I hope that's a glimpse of what's to come. Again I think they can be very compatible because you see what Riqui does, Marco isn't going to do. He's not going to dribble through people and get to the next line and he eliminate the first defender. He's going to find gaps and pockets. He plays we fish sigh. He's going to link things up and find incredible passes. Riqui who drops low, Marco who stays high; there's a good combination there at times.
So the question is, like in my head, I have a vision. Tonight I saw some of that of what it can look like. And the key now is to continue to grow that relationship and those around them.
And the other key is making sure that we are solid on the defensive side with the group of players out there that we all are real stable when it comes to the defensive piece because we know the attacking creativity and quality is there for sure.
Q. Your thoughts on the center back pairing with Maya and Jalen Neal?
GREG VANNEY: I thought, again, I thought they had a good night. We had a lot of the ball so I thought their decisions with the ball first and foremost starting our attacks, being solid in their decisions so that nothing really transitioned in front of them as a starting point that was 70 percent of the game. 30, I think our counterpressing was good.
So our ability to step and press some of the exit passes I thought Jalen was a little more aggressive tonight. I think maybe he lost one dual here or there, but I thought he had a pretty good night of getting tight and being physical. Something that we were wanting from him.
But I thought they had a good, solid night, especially, look, we came off of a game where we gave up some silly goals in Seattle, and we wanted to bounce back. And I thought the guys bounced back and showed a certain level of aggressiveness and also managing some transition situations that could have gotten -- could have got a little fuzzy. We dealt with them pretty well.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports