BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. -- LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena spoke after the Galaxy's 2-2 draw with the Chicago Fire.
Arena's thoughts are below:
On his thoughts on the match
“Pretty sloppy game. Difficult conditions, really hot and humid. You could see in the last 20 minutes of the game, the game was wide open. Pretty sloppy. We played a good first 30 minutes. I don’t know why we fell apart the last 15 minutes of the first half but it was a killer and we’re fortunate they didn’t get the third goal at the start of the second half, so we’re fortunate there and we were able to come back and get a goal, press a little bit, both teams had chances. Difficult for both teams to recover from weekend games.”
On the game opening up with the second half substitutions of dos Santos and Gordon
“Gio got the goal, and Alan and Gio did a good job. I think because of the conditions, players were just physically shot. There was a little bit of pace to the game, sloppy game, balls turning over, some counter attacks, the game opened up. The conditions were such that fatigues set in and it got a little crazy at the end.”
On the squad rotation with the congested schedule
“We have a game Saturday, we’re going back home. It’s very hard to play three games in a week. If we learn how to schedule properly, you go Saturday, Wednesday, Sunday. When you go Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, the third game makes it real difficult. We could put a full squad out tonight, then we have a tough time on Saturday so we tried to balance it a little bit. A couple guys needed a break anyway but it’s still going to be difficult for us to get our team ready for Saturday. That’s part of it.”
On if he’s happy with the road point
“No, this is a game we should get three points, in my opinion, and didn’t.”
On his thoughts on the Fire
“It’s not my job to tell you about the Chicago Fire, I’ll let the Chicago Fire tell you about them. I haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing the Chicago Fire. No disrespect, I’m not as familiar with them so I’d leave it to them to talk about their team.”
On why the team should have gotten three points
“Because we’re capable of winning this game. Our team is capable of winning this game.”
