PayPal Park; San Jose, California
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Sporting Director & Head Coach Frank Yallop
On the result:
“It’s not a good feeling losing any game. It was one of those where we didn’t really play that well. We had chances to score that we should have put away to be honest. It’s a game where you’ve got to put it away. It’s won and lost in both boxes. They had two or three good chances and scored two goals. We had maybe five really good chances and scored one, so as disappointing as it is, it was kind of a fair reflection of the game. You’ve just got to finish your chances. And we made sloppy errors defensively to give them their chances as well.”
On returning to the home of the San Jose Earthquakes:
“It was great. We came here in preseason and played a couple of games against them, and it was good. I also came here once with Chicago. That being said, it’s very disappointing, but that’s football. We had a few injuries, but that’s not an excuse. We didn’t have a full array of things to change the game from the bench with guys banged up a little bit. But it’s just football. They did well, hats off to them. They deserved to win in the end with us missing our chances. Two well taken goals, good luck in the next round.”
On what to expect from Monterey Bay F.C. the rest of this season:
“If you think about it, even in this game, we are quite exciting to watch. We make a few mistakes so it’s exciting down one end, but we do create a few chances to score in the final third as well. We’ve just got to get better at our finishing. We have two strikers out right now in Seku [Conneh] and [Christian] Volesky. Again I’m not making excuses, but you can change things if it’s not going your way and we didn’t have those options. Chris [Cortez] had a couple chances to score, Robbie [Crawford] scored his header. Just disappointed, but that’s football. Have to move on.”
Forward Simon Dawkins
On being back at PayPal Park:
“It was good, it’s like a second home for me, I’ve spent a lot of time here so it was good to be back. Frank [Yallop] as well, so it was good to be back with him. Obviously disappointed that we didn’t get the result, but it was good to be back and play here on this field again.”
On playing in front of a PayPal Park crowd again:
“It was good and this stadium is lovely as well. It was good to see the fans back out here, a lot of San Jose fans are here supporting the local teams around here. It was good to see a good turnout and it was great to play in front of them again.”
On returning to play soccer in the States:
“That was my first 80 or so minutes in a while, it was good. I hadn’t played for the last three years just about, so it was good to get match fitness in for me. It’s just obviously disappointing with the result. But a personal thing for me to take away from it is that I got minutes and hopefully I can build on Saturday and the forthcoming.”
On what to expect from Simon Dawkins this season:
“To put in better performances, really. Like I said, I just need to get fit and then once I do that I will be able to contribute more and more and hopefully play 90 minutes or whatever is needed. So I’m just trying to get fit and then we’ll see what happens from there.”
On his role in the formation:
“I started over on the left, then we made a few changes and I got moved to the middle. It was more to try to get on the ball so that I could help build some attacks because we lacked that a little bit. But obviously it didn’t work out today.”
Midfielder Robbie Crawford
On Bay Cities advancing to the third round:
“Yeah it was like a cup final for them with us obviously being a bit more of an established team. Credit to them though honestly. They played out from the back and they took their chances. Obviously they didn’t have too many, but they capitalized on the mistakes we made and punished us.”
On moving forward in league play:
“The cup was a chance for the manager to play some guys that haven’t played in the league as much. Obviously that was their chance to impress. It’s difficult when there’s guys that haven’t played much together before, but we’re not interested in excuses. We should have had enough quality and experience to win the game, and it didn’t happen for us tonight. All we can do is focus on the league and we’ve got a short turnaround with another match on Saturday.”
