SKCvPOR Quotes: “These are the statement victories that you need”

Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes

On managing the absences of Remi Walter and Johnny Russell…

I think it would have been difficult, for sure. Result wise? Yes, but since the Seattle game, we’ve been pretty good in a lot of areas. I think today, it’s something that we talk about a lot, you have got to be good with the ball. When you’re good with the ball, there’s a couple of things that happen from it. One is you have purposeful chances that you create and the other is that, in weather like this when it gets hot, it becomes a really important aspect of every game. I thought, for the most part, we were pretty good with the ball.

On the team rallying back…

The fact that, before halftime, we got in the position that we did, that was very important to tie with a great goal, world class. Then we created that next chance. But coming out at halftime, we talked about having a fast start. Getting the other goals and still maintaining a good way to finish off the game was also very important as well. I will say it was not a good goal to give up for us early on in the game, but good mentality to come back.

I think we’re actually deserving, as (Erik) Thommy just said, we’re deserving of the result based on the way that we played: the movement of the players, their penetrating runs, their desire to get in the box and then their vision on the field. So, it for sure builds confidence, but it’s because of what they did, not because we were fortunate. The idea is, I think, to me it’s a youth sports thing where people talk about piling on. I think in our sport at the end of the day, we have goal differential, so we need to score goals. With us trying to climb the points, we have to continue to score goals and try to keep them out of the net.

On the team’s turnaround…

The recent form has been for quite some time. As I said, we played a lot of good games in that time. We just weren’t getting the result. I think the difference is that the players have maintained their belief. Obviously, your confidence goes away a little bit, but they keep working. They keep working towards it. I think that the most important thing to understand, and I’ve said it a million times, is that when you have so many guys out injured, it puts too much pressure on the rest of the guys to carry the team over the course of time. Now those players are all getting fitter. I mean, today Gadi (Kinda) played 60 minutes. He couldn’t do that last game. He just didn’t have it in him. Now he played 60 minutes in heat and that’s just after a whole week of training. It improves pretty quickly. Again, we’ve had to have patience with it, and it would never have made sense to try to push guys out onto the field when they weren’t ready. I guess at the end of the day, I had to suffer a lot of these moments in here around it, but at the end of the day I’m not going to put the players in jeopardy when they’re not ready. So, I think now what you’re finding is that you are starting to see that the players are all coming back. Like today, even Felipe (Hernandez) gets a chance to enter the game and he creates a great opportunity to score because he’s not asked to come in and take all the weight of the team on his shoulders. He can now be a participation player within the group and now his qualities can come out and he can have a real effect on the team.

On Johnny Russell and Remi Walter being out…

I don’t know yet. I think on Tuesday (Johnny) goes for a scan because of the holiday and a lot of times what happens is it’s not good to go right away. Remi, I think will be back for Dallas.

On the schedule congestion…

Honestly, I don’t have an answer for you. I think we get a chance to chime in on a few little things. They send the schedule out at the end when they’re done. They say, ‘Hey, tell us if there’s anything that you think needs to be changed.’ You tell them, but those things never get changed. So, at the end of the day, they make the schedule and that’s what it is. Unfortunately, I think it’s been stuck to us a little bit. Again, I say this, our guys are moving on from all the different things that occur in the game. We’re trying to control what we can control.

On the Jake Davis substitution…

Just load management. I had it in my mind, to be honest with you. The idea was that the outside players, the outside backs, because we thought that they were going to be involved in the game and have to do a lot. It’s different for wingers. Usually they are midfield and in, but the outside backs a lot of times they’re doing a lot of overlap and they have a lot more to run and so I wanted to keep those two guys fresh. (Graham) Zusi could easily do 45. So, it was the idea. We have the three games this week and like I said, I didn’t want to start Zusi because I just think it’s too hot for him to finish the whole game. I thought it was a good time to bring him in. Then with Tim (Leibold), 30 minutes was just the proper amount of time for him with the heat. But, again, I wanted to keep that area of the field fresh. That was the reason why. It wasn’t anything to do with those guys or how they played, because all the guys played really well. 

On the subs contributing to the goals…

Well, you could ask somebody in here. Usually I never sub. So now that I have subbed and they worked, I guess maybe I’ll get a little credit.

Sporting Kansas City midfielder Erik Thommy

On the game opening back up after his goal…

Of course, if you score, you feel better. I think we had good possession before the goal as well. Especially when it’s hot, coach said it before, it’s tough to run behind the ball and to react. But I think we deserved the goal. In the second half, we created more chances and we had more spaces, so, I think 4-1 was deserved.

It always feels good to score. It was perfect timing. I think we needed that goal at that time. It turned the game a little bit, but in the end, I think I have said this a lot of times before, I don’t care who scores the goals because we just need three points. On Wednesday, I don’t care again who scores. Hopefully we win the next game as well.

On playing on the right side of midfield…

It’s a little bit different but, at the end, it’s the same position. I have to do my job. I think I can help the team as well on the right side. So, today I scored a goal.

Sporting Kansas City forward Daniel Salloi

I saw the space and I even pointed. (Graham) Zusi saw me. He’s amazing at these crosses. So I knew he will put it in the right spot. It was just a matter of my run if it’s good enough and it was good. I’m glad I got that goal. It was a very nice win, very nice. I’m very proud of the team.

On the directness of the goal…

I like how we adjusted our game and I think we were more direct in the second half. Things worked out much, much better. But I really like how we approached the second half. It’s going to be a key piece of our game that, in the summer, we keep the ball and we put teams under attack because it’s going to be tough to play here in the summer. I was even dying in this heat and I know it wasn’t even the true Kansas City heat. It was good. It was good.

On bouncing back after last week..

We weren’t really worried about the St. Louis game. I just think it’s something to put behind us. I also think it’s not fair that you want to create a rivalry and then you let a team rest for a whole week and we fly to the West Coast and then come back midweek. Look, we are rested. We had a week to rest. We also won at home. So obviously we are focusing game by game. And then with St. Louis, there’s two more games left. It’s a three-game series, so we’ll be trying to go at the other ones. But for us, right now, the target is to climb back up on the standings.

On the short turnaround to Wednesday…

We have to deal with it. It is what it is. We just have to take it game by game and we have to get as many points as we can because we’re going to have a couple of home games now. These games are very important to climb back up in the standings.

On getting the team healthy…

It’s never easy. You don’t want to deal with injuries at all, but it happens. (Johnny Russell and Remi Walter) are a huge part of our team, both of them, and I’m glad that people step up when they’re missing. But that’s what we have to continue because there’s going to be injuries. We don’t want to have them, but people have got to step up and if you work as a team as we did today, then we’ll be fine. But it’s one of those things that is just unlucky.

On Erik Thommy’s goal…

Oh my God, an amazing goal. I didn’t expect him to hit that so well and he did. We very much needed that. I think the game was very slow in the first half and that was a good pickup goal for us. I’m glad he scored and what a goal, what a goal.

Yeah, it’s our first comeback win and this is very important. If a team can do that, that goes a long way in a season, so hopefully we can continue doing that. Obviously, I don’t want to be losing and then coming back, but if it happens, it shows the character of this club.

On having the most game-winning goals in club history…

I’m very proud. It means a lot. I look at these records and I always talk about them. This is something that I’m very proud of. I remember I scored in the Open Cup final and that was a game winning goal. And I remember (Zoran Savic), our assistant coach, told my dad that takes a clutch player to score game winning goals and it’s a big part of someone’s career. I kept that with me. I think that’s important to go for those goals because those are the ones that help the team a lot and it’s very special for me.

On going from the club’s academy to the club’s record book…

Yes, that’s the goal. That’s the goal. I came to Children’s Mercy Park first as an academy kid, just watching the first team and looking at the wall where you see those records. That’s where you want to be. I’m climbing up on those records and it’s very important to me. Hopefully I can break many more.

On the idea of his name being on the wall with the Sporting Legends…

Maybe one day. It takes a big career because those legends of the club, they all won trophies. It’s important. I have a long-term deal with Sporting KC and I take pride in that. I want to be one of the best ones if you look at the numbers. This is one of them that is important to me.

On getting the fans’ support in the 4-1 win…

It’s very important. These are the statement victories that you need. I think everybody gets excited about them. I’m not saying we’re always going to have these, but as you said, this is important. Everybody enjoys it and it gives us good power to go into the next game. We’re going to have a tough game on Wednesday, but we have got to get another win.

Portland Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese

Thoughts on the team’s performance…

I thought we managed the game very well in the first half. I think we had a lot of things in control. I think, at the end of the half, we could have been up 3-1 if we took advantage of the last two opportunities that we had. But we were in control. We were in control. Yes, not a lot with the ball, which is something that needed to be a little bit better, maybe to keep the ball a little bit more. But we were in control in a very organized way. And even in that organized way, they found one moment to score the goal. Everything else, we managed very well and we just had to continue to make sure that we carry on in the second half with the same idea. This is a difficult place. We need to be organized. That’s the most important thing. We know what the dangers are and then three minutes of distraction and then the game changed completely. Three minutes in which we give the opportunity for them to be able to score two goals that were definitely manageable. Then now we are chasing the game. Then at the end, we got a little bit unlucky as well with Yimmi (Chara) getting hurt, we had to make another substitution. Towards the end, we tried to spark the team in throwing everything that we can up front and trying to see if we spark the team with attacking players with Nathan (Fogaca), (Jaroslaw) Niazgoda and (Sebastian Blanco) in trying to make sure that we get more guys into higher positions. You know that you are going to concede a little bit in some spaces. We took out (Claudio) Bravo also to make sure that he doesn’t get any yellows so he can be available for next game, but also for (Marvin) Loria to make sure that he gave us a little bit more attack on the left side. Then that fourth goal, I take it as a responsibility in changing the shape and throwing everything that we can to try to come back into the game. But the big thing for me is just giving the game away in three minutes and allowing them to be able to score two goals when we had a lot of the control of the match for the majority of the game. Maybe we got a little bit of the feeling that we could have gone more and we opened ourselves more and that’s how we conceded. We have to analyze that. But the reality is that those two goals completely changed the game.

On how Santiago Moreno is doing…

Santi had a spasm in his back and then he started feeling dizzy. I actually tried to hold it as much as I could on the field to finish the half. That way we made a substitution at the half. And still with a little bit of dizziness, he was able to create a few moments, but he couldn’t run back. At some point, he couldn’t do some things because especially the spasm in his back besides the dissonance. So we had to change him. We have to analyze a little bit now how he’s feeling. He was a little bit on the table right now trying to close his eyes and regain a little bit of stability.

On the team’s struggles on the road…

I wouldn’t relate the game today with all the games. I don’t think that we have struggled in the sense of some of the games, in the way we play in all the games. I think games like Cincinnati, games like Dallas and other games that we’ve been away, St. Louis, we managed things well and unfortunately, sometimes we come up a little short. I think today was just a different situation. I think this is, in the second half, I will say it that it is similar to the situation that we had in Atlanta in the second half. But probably second to that is being probably the second half in which we conceded those two goals in an easy way and then we didn’t finish the game the right way. But also I will take responsibility as well in substitutions, in changing the shape to a diamond to try to throw more players forward and try to create something more in the hope that we could find a way to tie with the players that we had. I take that responsibility. But I think I wouldn’t relate this game with all the games that we have done well. But definitely this one is very disappointing and not a good performance after we gave up all the good things that we were doing and the control that we had in the game and make the game a lot more difficult for us.

Portland Timbers forward Franck Boli

On the conditions for the game…

Well, it wasn’t easy – a hard pitch and very hot. It’s different from Portland, but we’re not going to make excuses. But we have to acknowledge that that was difficult as well. You could ask anybody in the team and they will say the same. But once again, no excuses. That’s the game.

On what changed after halftime…

I don’t know. I think we just had to keep going the same way as we started, which we didn’t do. And of course, in the football game, you have to keep the same focus through the whole game and we didn’t do that. That’s why we conceded some goals.

On opening the scoring and his other chances…

I think on the goal, I was at the right time at the right position. So, yeah, I just had to kick it in with the left foot. The other chance, I think, was with the head. It was hard to see the goal. I just tried to put it in, but, yeah, unfortunate. And the third one, I think I shot past the defender. We have to keep going and try again. It’s not easy.

On the mood in the locker room…

Well, of course, everybody’s down. Everybody’s disappointed. We have a good squad, good team, good players. So we can’t allow things like that to happen. I hope we learn from that one. And you could see guys down there very disappointed, heads down. Of course, it’s normal. It’s hard to take it, but we have to work and try again.