CARSON, Calif. – LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena’s postgame comments from the team’s 1-0 victory over Isidro Metapan.
(On the pluses and minuses of the result…)
ARENA: “Three Points. That’s all that I’m concerned about tonight. We knew that we had to get three points.”
(On getting out the 4-3-3 formation…)
ARENA: For about five minutes, it was a 4-3-3 then it was a 4-4-2, but that’s fine. Jose and Jack were the strikers and Chandler and Courtois were wide.
(On starting reserve players…)
ARENA: “They did alright, they worked hard, but you could see their inexperience at times. Our passing in the last 20 minutes of the game wasn’t very good, and it did pick up once we had Juninho, Sarvas and Gyasi on the field. But we need to pass better and that would be a criticism of our team tonight. A positive is the three points and the clean sheet. We’ve played much better this year as a team and last game. And in this competition, it was about advantage and tonight, the most important aspect of this game was getting three points. That was accomplished. So we’re in good position to advance, we’ve still got to earn at least a point to advance, so we’ve got a lot of work ahead.”
(On the importance getting a result against Cartaginés and qualifying before the fourth game…)
ARENA: “I think that it is important.”
(On whether he was prepared to use Keane…)
ARENA: “Yes, we really could have played, but we’d rather have him fully rested for Saturday. He had a difficult couple of weeks with the internationals in Europe, the travel back, and the game against D.C. United. I just felt it was in his best interests, you know, if we could avoid using him. I wanted to do that.”
