St. Louis 2, L.A. Galaxy 1
Q. Want to hear your thoughts about the start of the the game with McCarthy's pass out of and Paintsil's pass out of the back that caught you guys on the wrong side. How do you feel everything happened today?
GREG VANNEY: Well, I thought we started game not really matching the intensity of the game but understanding coming out of the locker room, what we said is we've got to manage wisely the first 10, 15 minutes playing for their life. They are at home. They are a pressing team in general, and they are going to come out and create some problems for you understand early on.
We were not at the right speed of things. We were not moving to support each other. We were casual. Our decisions were sometimes ones that put us in trouble. We didn't really put the ball behind them at all just to turn them and see if we should shift the game out of our half of the field and ultimately, when you're not up to speed, the opposition is pressing you and is going to play pretty direct and we are making mistakes.
Yeah, we made enough mistakes to get ourselves down a goal. I thought after we got down a goal we started to find our way back into it in terms of establishing the ways we could hold the ball. I thought we minimized more or less there in the rest of the first half, I don't remember too many things that they had in terms of chances or anything like that.
And then we adjusted at halftime, brought Miguel on, get the goal back right away. Yeah, and the second goal, again, I don't think they had a boatload of options or goal-scoring chances in the first part of the second half, and then we were a little bit careless with an exit pass again.
For me, we can lose exit passes. It's a little bit of how we play. It the reaction after the exit pass that concerns me. We missed the pass. Joe missed the pass going out, but then Joe's reaction is very stagnant. He stands in the guy who was kind of stepping to priss him and keeps moving into the box and the cutback cross finds the guy that kind of ghosts in the box at the top of the -- at the penalty spot and he scores.
I'm a coach who understands that mistakes happen in the game. No one is going to play the perfect game across the board. But how we react to the things that don't go well is going to be pivotal and is going to potentially determine our season, especially teams that look to counter press and look to really press and cause mistakes and try to take advantage of those situations. We can't both be a little bit loose with the ball and then not react as a group collectively to deal with the situations.
Now you're down two and we are chasing it a little bit there obviously at the end.
Q. Specifically on Joseph, getting the yellow card and now missing the El Tráfico game coming up, any thoughts of pulling him? Was he aware we had a yellow card? And with Riqui missing on yellow card accumulation, is there questions about maybe explain for those guys?
GREG VANNEY: We'll deal with the last part internally. But in terms of were they aware, was he aware? Yes.
For Riqui, that was last week. I mean, he got his trying to recover a ball in the transition. I have more patience for that than one that is having a conversation with the referee and it's not in the run of play and is doing nothing that's really helping the team. That one doesn't sit well with anyone.
So as I said to the guys, our decisions are going to determine our fate in the future, whether that's in the run of play and the decisions we make in our build out or in some of these actions today where we lost balls that came back at us or decisions like that one, that was after the play had nothing to do with anything to make a decision that's detrimental to the group in the big picture. That's unacceptable; any time it's unacceptable at this time of the year, and it's made us just a little more vulnerable as we go into the next, and that's stuff that can't happen.
We're too experienced and been around too long much too long to be in those situations. The rest of it we'll take care of it internally and have a discussion on that.
Q. Wanted to ask you your thoughts on Marco Reus and his first start for the team today.
Yeah, it's a tough first start to be mid day in St. Louis, and it's really hot out there. The tempo of the game was kind of at a moderate pace for a lot of it. They started off pretty fast but the game pretty quickly found like a moderate pace in which I felt like the changes of rhythm and the changes of speed inside of the game weren't as evident and weren't as clear; and I felt like, you know, that was also a little bit of a challenge for him on the day. I mean, obviously you see his quality. You know his vision, some of the things that he's able to do.
But you know, where Marco is going to really excel for us is when the change of rhythm happens or the movement off the ball is there and when it's this hot, you get just a little less movement off the ball which doesn't open up as many good looks. So a big part of it for us, and today for him; just to keep moving forward in his match fitness. He got one of the more challenging games that I think he's going to get weather-conditions wise from here till the end of the season just because of the heat factor in the middle of the afternoon and it was scorching.
Aside from that, I think, you know, we take it as a step forward for him just because for him he hasn't played in a while and being able to get through 65, 70 minutes and showing him in moments what he's capable of doing and other parts, as he'll show as he gets more and more comfortable inside the league, and the tempo of games picks up a little bit, I think that will suit him.
Q. When you look at the opponents' position in the division and where you need to be playing your best football this time of the season, how frustrated are you with that result and is it the type of result that's unforgivable for a coach?
Well, I'm disappointed in the result for sure. More for me, it's being able to manage the conditions and still be able to perform on things that we need to perform on on the day and execute in the ways we need to execute on the day. That's what's important in this time of the season. That then also translates into results.
So again, I think you'll see across the league at this time of year, you're going to have -- you know, we see it all during the year. When you enter into a place, the conditions are a little different. We've got to be at the point in the season where we have to manage whatever the conditions are and still perform and execute upon the things that we need to execute to have the game look how we want it to look and see it out in the ways we need to.
I felt like we didn't do that today. So it's disappointing. It doesn't -- it happens in the course of the season. We have to bounce right back. You see it last night with the some of the results around. It's just something that you have to manage and you have to grow up from, and we don't have, you know -- we don't many games left and especially as we get to to the playoffs to have games like today. Sometimes it happens, and the response is what's going to be really important as we come into the international break and getting ready for next one.
I don't know what "unforgivable" exactly means with a team. That's why I'm not quite sure how to answer "unforgivable," but it's certainly not acceptable in many ways.
Q. Dejan got 20 minutes in his return to action. What did you see out of him and how are you looking to get him ready for the home stretch of the season?
Yeah, I mean, it was good to get him out there and get him moving. I think over the course of this last week where he trained with the group all week, his speed was getting up and his intensity level was getting higher. It just happened that when he entered in this game with 20 minutes to go, you know, they were pretty low, playing in transition, so there was not a lot of spaces to move. He was just trying to kind of hover underneath Miguel at times and in between the two and try to find space in the box and get into the box.
I think he was just trying to find any space to be involved in the game but then to be able to get into the box when we got into crossing situations. I don't think it's a real great game to be able assess overall performance or where he's at. I just think it's important that he got inside of the game and he got 20 minutes, and he's got to get his rhythm back and he's got to get his match fitness back and he's got to get some opportunities in front of goal in between now of the next couple weeks and just continue to build forward.
But this game was at that point. It was a little bit unique because they were pretty low and really kind of defending the spaces in their box and in front of their box. There's not a lot of space for the forwards to move other than just to try to find some window inside of the box to finish, and that's kind of what it came down to for him.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports