MONTERREY, Mexico –Bruce Arena addressed the media following the LA Galaxy’s 1-0 CONCACAF Champions League Semifinal second leg defeat to C.F. Monterrey. LA fell 3-1 on aggregate.
Arena’s thoughts are below…
(On the club’s defeat…)
ARENA: “First all, we’re disappointed with the result tonight, but we lost to a very good team. We may have lost this series in the last 10 minutes of the game in Los Angeles. We made it very difficult for ourselves and tonight was going to be hard because of the way that we played in the last 10 minutes last week. Having said that, Monterrey is an excellent team and deserving winners.”
(On whether desperation threw off the offense?)
ARENA: “There was no desperation until perhaps the last 20 minutes of the game. “
(On LA’s inability to create chances…)
ARENA: “I thought Monterrey played well. Their center backs had an excellent game. The two midfielders, Zavala and Ayovi were very good as well.”
(On starting Donovan…)
ARENA: “This competition is very difficult for MLS teams right now, we don’t have our full fitness at this time of year and certainly that is the case with Donovan. I thought Landon did very well to survive 90 minutes tonight.”
(On the experience…)
ARENA: “A great experience for our club and certainly, we will look back to game one where we were in position to win and come here to make it more difficult on our opponent and we failed in that regard.”
(On Omar Gonzalez’s performance…)
“I thought Omar performed very well. He can use this competition as a means of growing as a player. Hopefully, he learned something from last week. I think tonight he was excellent.”
(On whether MLS teams are at a disadvantage because they have just started their season…)
ARENA: "Yes."
(On how MLS compares to Liga MX…)
ARENA: “Football in the United States is growing and getting better each year. Our league is still behind the Mexican league, the Mexican league has greater resources to build better teams at this point.”
(On finishing…)
ARENA: “This game was going to be a tight game. We made on ourselves difficult last week so there was no reason to believe that this game was going to be open in the first 60 minutes of the game. They could comfortably organize their back line and their midfield and pick their spots to go forward. Last week, the last ten minutes of the game impacted the series greatly. We didn’t play well tonight in the attack, the last pass, the shot selection, but give them credit, they played very well.”
(On what the Galaxy can take from the series…)
ARENA: “There were a lot of positives. Our team played pretty well in this competition and this series. We learned that ten minutes might have sealed our fate.”
