Austin 1, LA Galaxy 0
Q. John, not the result you guys wanted. What was your message to the rest of your teammates in the locker room?
JOHN McCARTHY: My message?
Q. Yeah.
JOHN McCARTHY: Yeah, I didn't say anything after the game. There was enough that was said in premium. We knew we had to start fast and aggressive. It's one of those games, time zone change and stuff like that. I think we had a couple of chances. That's all we really said, start fast and be focused.
Q. I wanted to ask you, too, just last week, you guys put up a good performance with ten men -- able to climb out of that one. Feels like this match halted the momentum, and there's been moments like that this year. From a player's perspective, how frustrating is it to not have that consistency, and obviously now a lot more people are kind of paying attention to this across the league.
JOHN McCARTHY: Yeah, it's frustrating. You want to win. I want to win. I don't like losing. But I want to win at everything I do. I know a lot of people on the team do. We just have to have that killer mentality. There's two or three moments in games that we just f--- ourselves throughout the season.
I've been -- no problem putting my hand up; I messed up at some points. I think it's just little details and focus, and it comes down to how we act on the training field and putting effort into the game.
So it's super frustrating. We've had moments where we should win games, and obviously you can't win every game, and moments where we should lose games.
But I think this is one where, especially coming off of last week, I think we all believed that we could have won that game, and I think easily we could have won this game as well.
It's a tough place to be in. But you can't f---ing pout about it. You just have to move on and have that killer mentality, and then get a win at home.
Q. This was your best game so far this season. I know it doesn't really matter when you lose, but do you feel like individually when you pick up and have positive games, week by week, this is the type of team that just are just one win away from going on a run?
JOHN McCARTHY: Yeah, of course. I think it's not a single individual is going to win us a game and not a single individual is going to lose us a game. And I've said that before. It's got to be a total team effort for 90 minutes, locked in, dialed in, focused.
Yeah, one win could change our whole season around. I've been part of teams where you start slow and you catch fire and you go on great runs, or you start great, slow down in the middle third. And kind of like last year, we slowed down a little bit towards the end of season and had the first place in our grasp and things worked out.
So there's going to be ups and downs through the season and obviously we're down now. So we just have to find a way to get out of it. You can't mope and pout and you can't f---ing dwell on things. The game is over. Yeah, it sucks. But we have to win at home. We've got find that killer mentality again.
Q. When you talk about "killer mentality," do you try and find silver linings in losses; that this team could also embrace maybe becoming an underdog and fighting through that to kind of overcome the early season adversity? And thank you for your time.
JOHN McCARTHY: What do you mean by "a silver lining"?
Q. So for example, even though currently, the losses are really great, you find the silver linings in being maybe an underdog, grasping on to things that people are going to doubt you; the media are going to write about it. You know, other teams are going to have their say about it. People may think you guys are a soft touch right now, but in those kind of adversary moments, you can find the silver linings to kind of help the mental part of the game, especially, too.
JOHN McCARTHY: Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, as a group, like I said, we are not in a good spot. We're an inch away from winning and an inch away from losing. Those are tough moments and we've to deal with it right now. We have to figure it out as a group, and like I said, not one of us is going to win it.
But I've not go problem being an underdog. I've been an underdog my whole life. People doubted me, still doubt me. I don't really give a rat' s ass about that stuff.
And as a group, if we are an underdog group, that's the way you've got to find the little dog in you and show up and really f---ing play and be a killer. That's what I've been saying, there needs to be that mentality.
And I know as a person, I have that. I know I have that off the field; I have that on the field, and I try to instill it in a lot of guys because I only care about winning. I don't care about anything else.
I don't care how we do it. I'll win every game 10-9, doesn't matter. Winning is winning. So I think there needs to be that edge and fire that we had last year. It needs to come back. It needs to be there. You can't mope. You can't pout.
And if teams count us out, great. Count us out. We're good enough to bounce back. At some point, we will.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports