Seattle Sounders 4, LA Galaxy 0
Q. Seemed like you guys never got out of first gear in the game. How much is that Seattle and what they're good at in terms of clogging lanes and keeping you guys from what you want to do, and how much was energy, effort, sort of applying the solutions to the game?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. Obviously they have a lot of physical competence around the field and guys willing to get tight and get in your space and be disruptive.
The two centre-backs, strong, again, physical. Wing full back, strong. So I think just from the physical side of things we lost a lot of the duels over the course of the night, which made it difficult for us when you want to try to settle the game or play out of some pressure.
Somewhere on the field you have to be able to manage a duel here or there, or be able to play fast enough that you can play yourself out of those situations.
I agree with you. A big part of it is we weren't playing and moving fast enough off some of these situations to support each other so we weren't getting into so many confrontations, dueling confrontations, that I feel like was very disruptive for us on the evening.
I don't know if it's four games in a short period of time, one day less rest. We can talk about all that stuff, but we never hit the necessary speed on the night in many regards. Therefore I felt like we got pretty dominated in a lot of areas of the field and in the game through the course of the night.
Q. Can you explain this weird juxtaposition, Leagues Cup, there is 18 MLS teams, you guys end up being one of the top four teams out of those 18, so by that nature you're one of the best teams in that group.
GREG VANNEY: Sure.
Q. And then coming to the other side you guys are dead last in the league.
GREG VANNEY: Yeah.
Q. Is there something specific to Leagues Cup? Smaller tournament? How do you explain any of that?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think -- I mean, I think a little bit there is who we play, when we play. There is a lot of things. I don't think we have a super deep group when it comes to a lot of games in a short period of time to match some of the physicality of some of the games and/or when it's physical to be able to play at the speed that we needed to play to get ourselves out of some of those confrontations.
I felt like you can see some of these teams were able to take big rotations and still work through those rotations, and I feel like that's something for us that we still have to build towards.
So I think we've run a lot of guys over the course of these four games that are similar. We've moved couple positions here or there, and I think physically for us I just think we lost the game in a lot of ways physically today and then between tactical and the technical side of the game and creating a game with speed in it, we just couldn't match it tonight.
And so I don't think it was -- tonight there has been a few games over the course of the season where I felt we were just outplayed across the board. This was one of them. A lot of the other games have been sometimes 50/50 and we haven't been able to get them across.
Felt like we did a great job in Leagues Cup of managing the situation, hurting the oppositions when they tried to go man to man to us. Felt like we were playing faster, moving faster for each other and finding solutions inside of those games; tonight we didn't.
I don't think we had another gear to get ourselves out of the situation.
I think with some rest and another opportunity hopefully down the road we can put a much better performance on against these guys.
Q. As you look at the upcoming weeks, cross country trip, then back, and then right into Leagues Cup. How do you process that? You said the roster is not deep as you would like it to be, so how do you work your way through the next maybe week and a half, two weeks?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I have to just kind of take some inventory out of the course of these four games and see physically where we are going into this week and make some decisions as we go to Miami and how we wants to utilize Miami and what that means for our preparation for Leagues Cup.
Don't have those decisions for you today. It's something we need to think about. Flying across and going across the country to play a game in Miami, come back to play what's going to be a big game for our season, just have to think about what that might look like.
Q. Saw Elijah Wynder get on the field tonight. Hasn't been part of the rotation; he was down with G2 for a while. I guess been a struggle for him to get adjusted to MLS. What's that process been like?
GREG VANNEY: I think what we saw, and he played a bit in the early part of the season and we've seen some similarities with Lucas. They have some great physical qualities, and I think that's something we can build and to give them. They need a little time and he needs a little time just to connect with some of the other players in terms of moments in the game, priorities, speeds of play, where the ball needs to get to and go to.
So just some awareness of things I think to play inside the intricacies of our midfield. Tonight it's just game for him because sometimes it's just duels and being able to win some physical moments, it was an opportunities for him.
I'm seeing progress in his game, and I would like to down the stretch of this season get him more involved into some of the rotations and get him more minutes. It's just been a process. For him if he's going to play this a lower pivot position then it's his relationship with the other pivot and that timing and moving off of each other, and it's a lot of awareness and intricate sort of things.
If he's higher on the field for us then he's running through lines and it's about the final product, setting up attacks, things like that. He's a guy who is learning between those two roles. I've been trying to figure out, okay, when he continues to evolve is he better a lower pivot or is he going to be more useful as a guy who's higher and powerful and running through the lines.
To be honest with you I've been learning a little bit about him and trying to figure out what direction we really want to take him in this process to open up his career and also to help our team. He does have the physical tools to compete in this league. It's just adding some other things that I think make our system function, too. So it's not just about the player. It's about how the player fits into the flow of things, which to be fair to the guys, other than tonight has been going pretty well over the last a little bit.
And Lucas had some back issues and that's the main reason I didn't put Lucas out there ans warmup. He was tightening up and has been for the last few days, so I spared him the moment because he's struggling a little bit physically.
Q. Several of the players spoke about in the leadup to the Leagues Cup the opportunity for the trophy in that tournament. Whereas the situation in the league is a little bit more difficult. Do you think that maybe subconsciously the players played down to that level today?
GREG VANNEY: I don't think that was the -- I don't think that was the subconscious, the mindset that shifted into us. I think when we got out on the field and the game became physical early and the solutions weren't necessarily coming about as well as they should, and then we started to get behind the game, and the solutions -- again, we were struggling to find the solutions in the game of how to you settle game into our vision. Game and play it in our -- the way we want at the speed we need to play at; we just didn't catch it.
I feel like it became a frustrating thing over the course of the night because collectively we weren't finding the necessary level we needed to be dangerous in goal-scoring chances. Not just to have a possession here or there, but to be dangerous or to pressure on their attacks or to slow them down and things like that.
I felt like we never got to speed. I don't think it's subconscious. I think the guys' mindset going out was correct. Not finding the solutions and probably getting fatigued through the course of the week, a busy week, we started to get very much behind the game.
So that's not an excuse. Just felt like we were too slow. Felt like we weren't winning in some the physical duels we needed to. I don't think it's subconscious. I just think it's the way the game happened to play itself out.
Q. How much was that was Seattle's press which felt like it was giving the back line a little bit of trouble coming out of the back?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, some of it was -- for sure some was the defending stuff. Again, at the top with two strong centre-backs, we've got to be able to play through some of these situations cleaner, be a little sharper, and play through them. If we're just hitting balls up to Nasci in these situations, those weren't easy duels for him against their centre-backs.
If we have to build, we have to buildout clean; we have to be sharper. I felt like we were just a little slow playing the balls in between the lines. Maybe sometimes just too far apart so we couldn't play as quickly as we needed to.
Again, felt like a lot of little things were disconnected over the night for a lot of reasons. Their press certainly disrupted us on the night, but we've managed presses like that before.
Again, they have some physical guys out there and they're physically confident. We have managed the press before, and it just comes down to you have to play faster, you have to play cleaner, you have to arrive for each other, and you do things in less touches.
I felt like we in too many dribbling duels and we lost the ball in the dribble more times tonight than I've seen us lose the ball in the dribble many times.
For me these are examples of either we weren't there fast enough in support of each other or we are not recognizing the solutions fast enough and playing quick enough.
Either of those things can create the same situation, which is too much dribbling, too much loss of possession on the dribble, game disruption, transitions going the other direction.
Now you're transitioning back to try to defend, which takes more and more energy and you start to burn yourself over the course of the game.
Again, I felt like we never hit the speed. It's as simple that. Against a team like this you have to be able to play at the top speed and execute at the top speed or you're going to be under it.
Q. Sorry for the loss. It's been a while since we saw Zavaleta play. Curious, what are the factors that you take into consideration when you're -- for him to play and where you think he fits in your squad?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think for him specifically, he's been a really huge asset for our team in the training environment, leadership environment, working with our younger players on the defensive side, things like that.
Just hasn't had a ton of minutes. When he isn't playing all the time it's a difficult ask for him to step out and catch the speed of a game like this. Or some of the games.
Again, he's a little deeper than anybody else and managing his spaces is a little bit more. I feel like he's kind of at that point, again, where he's really helping the group on the whole, but in some of the games they're a difficult ask. I like him in the back three sometimes. If we're going to play him in a three I feel like his leadership and management of situations is little better.
But he needs to be in a rhythm and he just hasn't had the games and we haven't used him enough for him to feel like he's really there. I think it's just kind of where we are and where he is at the moment.
Q. So I was curious your perspective on Micovic's performance tonight. He mishandled a couple balls there. I was just wondering was there any thoughts about making a switch or anything like that?
GREG VANNEY: No. I mean, only reason I would've made a switch is because I felt like Novak was tired or had a lot of games back-to-back-to-back-to-back. I mean ultimately we're investing in his continued progression. Sometimes dealing with busy parts of the season is what you're need to do as starting goalkeeper.
So that's part of it. I have to go back honestly and review totally how I felt about his game. I felt like there was a lot of other things I was thinking about over of the course of game and that wasn't the specific one that was catching my attention if I am being honest.
I have to go back and look.
Q. Just a quick one on Emiro. Any injury updates on him?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, x-ray and MRI, both negative. More of a contusion, so day to day. We'll see how he manages over the course of this week in terms of preparation for -- I suspect he'll be 100% ready for Leagues Cup and it's a question of what we do for him going into Miami.
Q. It's definitely been a disappointing season in the league. What's the one thing that's disappointed you the most about this season?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I just think we've never really caught our best form inside of the league and been there consistently. I feel like that's been the case. We haven't executed. We have given up goals soft. You know, in every season you have days where games go bad or go wrong and you don't get things right, guys are tired.
For us we've never been able to catch any sort of consistent sort of form and rhythm inside of the league and gotten results out of it and closed out games when we need to.
In this stretch -- we haven't lost many games in the last stretch. This is the second game we've lost out of the seven or eight or nine, so if the sky is falling I get it. We have also been in much form since the half turn of the season; actually been doing okay.
There was probably three or four games where we needed to close those games out better and take points and gave away goals in the 90-plus. So I think it's been about learning how to win, this group making the adjustments, me as well, and all of us making the adjustments based on the guys we lost and who we have to get results. Still play the way we want to play but seek out results.
I think we've been a lot better over the last stretch. I think we had a great Leagues Cup run. I think we played some good teams in Leagues Cup. We managed some teams that wanted to press us. We took care of them. We managed teams that want to sit back and we broke them down and we scored.
Tonight it didn't fit together. Played a good team and didn't fit together. We will keep battling. The Leagues Cup is the big thing. It's the trophy we get and maybe a Champions League spot. We will keep battling through the rest of the league and keep trying to bring guys forward and keep trying play our best every single game. That's what we're going to do.
Q. (No microphone.)
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, to be honest, I haven't watched them closely. I felt like I watched a lot of games through the course of Leagues Cup just because of the nature of every game sort of mattered there in the first round.
But I don't -- they're a good team. That's for sure. But I don't recall like specifics. I'll get into some of that now that things are calming down. I feel like the games have been coming so fast I haven't had a chance to look right in front of us.
To be fair, Seattle played the exact same three teams that we played during Leagues Cup, so we saw a lot of them during the course of Leagues Cup and we had a lot of mutual opponents, so watching them was actually easy because same teams we were playing time after time.
I haven't looked beyond this little scope of games at all. We'll take a look and get ourselves prepared for Miami and then lead that into what's to come after that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports