Dignity Health Sports Park; Carson, California
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Forward Seku Conneh
On the result:
“We trained hard to get a result after losing 5-0 last week. Then we lose a player to another red card, it sucks. We are still building. It can be tough to stay motivated if we aren’t careful, but we are trying and we are still building. But this feeling sucks. When you are a winner, you hate to lose. We want to win games, so this is tough. I don’t know what to tell you, I’m very disappointed. We have stuff to work on, we have to be sharper and work as a team, because this has really not been enough. And that goes for everybody, every teammate and especially for me as well. I just hope that we can keep each other sharp and work on things to get better.”
On creating chances, but not finishing:
“We had a chance in the first half to score a goal too, we just have to be sharper. When we get into the final third, we need to finish our runs in the box. We need to get there and have the heart to win positioning and score goals, that’s very important. I just feel like most of the time, we only want to go after it when we are behind and it’s not supposed to be like that. We need a better winning mentality, everybody does. We need to keep going and try our best.”
On priorities during the bye weekend:
“We have holes to work on going forward and defensively as well. I just hope we can get better. We have to keep fighting and keep each other sharp and even though we have a bye week, we still need to work hard. Even on our off days we should work on ourselves, get back together as a group and be ready for the next game.”
Goalkeeper Dallas Jaye
On the match:
“It was a tough one tonight, we came down here shorthanded. We were happy to get a full week of training after a long week last week, so we felt good going into the match even with a smaller group. We had a couple guys missing, but executing in the key moments of the game just wasn’t there tonight. We were able to get a great goal, but plenty of other opportunities that we could’ve probably created and could’ve gotten something out of, we didn’t. On the other end there are just little moments where we’re not clean enough yet, so we’re frustrated. I think the bye week will help us regroup, but ultimately there are a lot of improvements that need to be made. We’ve got work to do.”
On the goal and additional chances:
“It was a great goal; it was a great ball from Morey [Doner] to Seku [Conneh] and a great finish. There were some opportunities before that where I think we could’ve found one as well both in the first half and the second half. We came out with a lot of energy in the second half and being down, we created opportunities to get ourselves back. Then you get an unfortunate red card on a second yellow and it’s frustrating. Because we do feel like we were right there tonight to at least get out of here with a draw and push for that second goal and make it 2-2. Then obviously with the red card the game opens up and at a certain point, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, it doesn’t matter. We’re pushing for a goal to try to get the result and I’m glad the guys kept pushing to try to do that, even down a man. Ultimately, there’s a lot of things that we have to get back to Monterey and work on. We have to sit down, look ourselves in the mirror and keep pushing forward.”
On the upcoming bye weekend:
“I think the biggest thing for the bye week is getting rest and getting guys healthy. If we can come out of the bye weekend with a few more of the guys that we haven’t had for the last few matches, that’s a great start right there. And it gives us time to really sit down and analyze our last few matches, which has been tough to do on the short rest and the number of games. We can analyze a lot, look at the things we want to work on. We’ll have the conversations as a group and with the coaching staff. Guys are going to walk away from this one with a bad taste in their mouth and want to get back to work, so the bye weekend will almost be good and bad. We get the rest that we probably need, but at the same time after a game like that you want to get back on the field as soon as possible to push and get three points. We’ll take it in stride and look to come out in San Antonio in two weeks and right some of the wrongs from tonight.”
