LA Galaxy Head Coach Bruce Arena
On the outcome of the game: “We got the job done. There’s not much more to say about that. Not an easy day with the conditions and everything else. Certainly very challenging for both teams, to come out on top at this time of the season, when the points are important – it’s a great result for us.”
On Landon Donovan’s performance: “Landon had a solid game. We’re slowly building him forward with additional minutes. He gave us a good 60 minutes. It would have been nice to have some better conditions, but to be able to do that – to put in 60 minutes under those conditions was good.”
On Robbie Keane’s availability for the next game: “We will see, we have a week to see where he is at.”
On the play of the Dynamo: “They were [hard to break down]. You have to win these type of games and we haven’t won enough of them this year. That’s why we have 15 draws on our record. We killed ourselves at times this year by not being able to get a result on days like this. Give the Dynamo a lot of credit given that they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs – they still come out every game. I think it was last Saturday against Colorado – they gave them a hard game, I thought they could of gotten a result there. They obviously got a result in Seattle [on Wednesday] and fought to the closing minutes with us. So, I give [Houston Dynamo interim head coach] Wade [Barrett] a lot of credit for the job he’s done.”
LA Galaxy forward Alan Gordon
On securing a home playoff game: “It’s everything. This was a must-win in our eyes. We wanted to pick up some momentum going into the playoffs, show ourselves that we could fight for each other and that we could be a solid team, despite having a lot of key players out. And we showed that to ourselves. We showed that we could fight for each other, through the ups and downs throughout the game. Ugly or not, we garnered it out and got a good win.”
On whether this was a test for the team: “Yeah, it’s a good start. Those are extremely tough conditions out there. That was not a fun game to play. But you know it takes heart to get through a game like that. It takes heart to win away from home and in these conditions. So we all dug deep. We fought for each other. There were a lot of positives out there, a lot of unsung heroes. A lot of guys grinding it out. I think (LA MF) Baggio (Husidic) and (LA MF) Sebastian (Lletget), the whole back line. Everybody deserves some credit for this one. (LA GK) Brian Rowe in the back, everybody played their part and we got a great win.”
On his confidence level: “Yeah, I’ve said all along. There’s no question that I’m not as talented as (LA F) Robbie (Keane), that’s why he’s the king. But he’s out and it’s my job. That’s why I’m on this team – to step in and try and provide something for this team. So I’m up there trying to work hard, trying to do what I can do to help the team and that’s what I focused on.”
On scoring three goals in his last five games: “Yeah, I’ve always been proud of the work I do, not just the goals. So I want to work hard for the team and provide a strong presence up top for the team. The goals are just a plus.”
LA Galaxy midfielder Baggio Husidic
On the win being a good test before heading into the playoffs: “This was a grind, man. The first 45 minutes was probably the toughest conditions I think we’ve played all year. I think that was really, really hard. Maybe some of the altitude games will come close, but the heat was a factor. Sometimes this late in the season winning ugly, and getting in behind the ball, and winning one to nothing, and getting a deflection goal is what you need. We did have a great week of training. We wanted to come in and press and be all intensity, but once that heat hit, we lost our bite after 10, 15 minutes.”
On playing in front of the back line with Sebastian Lletget and taking on different roles: I think he’s an incredible player on the ball. He’s our outlet a lot of the times. You can play him any kind of ball you want and he’ll turn and get out of trouble. For me, as my role is to maybe sit a little bit deeper and be the connection between the defenders and the forwards, and other attacking midfielders. Today was a bit challenging due to the weather, but I think there are some positives and obviously you can always work on some of the issues we’ve had during the game.”
On the goal being a ‘perfect’ analogy for the way the game went: “That completely describes this game. Looking back at the game, we did have some really good opportunities, but we just lacked in precision. We found a goal. Those goals will come. I think we’re all feeling pretty optimistic moving forward.”
On the importance of locking down the third seed in the Western Conference playoffs: “We’ve got to keep building on what we’ve done today. We still don’t have a set team. Guys are competing like crazy during training. I think it’s everyone’s duty to train hard and hopefully be in that lineup on Sunday, and ultimately being in there in the first 11 moving forward come Wednesday.”
Houston Dynamo Interim Head Coach Wade Barrett
On the game: “Disappointed. I know we had to make some changes to the group, some ones that maybe we hadn’t planned on. That being said, we put out a team that was totally fresh – or mostly. One or two players had to serve double or triple duty, over the last three games. But for the most part we put out a group that was fresh and ready to go, and in a stretch like this I think that’s very important. We were in the game, we were competitive in the game, and I think the result was there for us, but we wanted more. We haven’t been able to pick up points at home, and that’s a problem. Can’t do anything about that now, we have to prepare for this next week and make sure that we’re completely ready to go. We have one more game to finish out the season and it’s important to every single one of us on the staff, the players, everybody, that we put in maximum effort over this next week to try to go get points next weekend.”
On the attack not having consistency: “It was a different group out there tonight, so certainly when you put out a group that’s more familiar with each other I think you get a little more fluidity in your play, and we didn’t have that tonight. Part of that comes from putting a group out there that you don’t have a ton of time to work with on things over the course of a week. We had the game in Seattle, the travel back, and we can’t do a whole lot in training because you have to kind of protect guys from overuse, so it takes away the ability to work on some of those patterns, we looked at it on Friday and Saturday, but it didn’t really translate into the game tonight. So we talked about a few different ways of trying to get at them, a few pockets of space I thought we could try to get after, and it just didn’t work tonight. We still had a couple set pieces that could have been dangerous for us, but we need to close the back door as well. You can’t give goals away.”
On the changes to the lineup: “We had guys out there (in training) trying to see if they would be available for the game today, you kind of have to test them the day before, to see if there’s a chance, and once we got through training yesterday I made the decision that putting those guys in was going to put them at risk. I want to be judged on making good decisions as a coach, and not trying to put guys in at all costs, especially with where we are right now so, I felt like that was the responsible decision. Not only to not put those guys at risk but also to have players in there who were completely fresh and ready to go. Those guys were hungry, they hadn’t played in a little while, and I wanted to try to ride that as much as we could.”
On F Mauro Manotas being the focus of opposing teams’ defenses: “I mean, that’s going to happen, Mauro’s obviously scored a bunch of goals, a lot of goals in the last – what is it, six goals in his last seven games? Something like that. So he’s going to get more attention, I thought Mauro actually did very well with his hold-up play tonight, his movement, his passing, there were some good things that came off his feet, and yeah, the onus is on everybody else to try to feed him good passes but also to get involved in the attack as well. And we had some good ideas, like I said in the buildup in training we walked through a couple of things I thought could get other players a chance, closer to goal, and for whatever reason it just didn’t click tonight.”
On the play of D Keyner Brown and MF Yair Arboleda: “Well we saw Keyner in Seattle, it was a short turn around for him to come back out and play again, I think it was a big ask on both him and (D) Dave (Horst) after the shift they put in Seattle, but with the injuries we had in the back we were a little short on options. Yair, he’s been hungry, he’s been training hard, so I was happy that he got his first start tonight, it’s important that we get a good look at him because he hasn’t gotten to play so many minutes.”
On other coaches giving credit to Wade’s team for their fight: “I think we have established a couple of good principles in the team. That said, I still want to deliver points at home. I think we’ve done a pretty good job on the road, it’s been four unbeaten on the road, but it’s been disappointing when we can’t deliver points at home. I’ve said this multiple times, we want to inspire people to come to the stadium. That doesn’t have to be through a win every time, sometimes it can be from a good passing play through midfield, a good defensive play, but we do need to reward ourselves and the people that come to the stadium with wins at home. That’s something we need to improve on, but I do feel like we’ve put some good principles in place, I think we’ve learned a lot as a staff, in the last three to four months, about the team, about how they can handle what we’re throwing at them, so I do feel like we’re in a better place now heading into next year.”
Houston Dynamo D DaMarcus Beasley
On what this season has meant for the team: “Disappointing. We didn’t get to the goal that we wanted, which is to get to the playoffs and obviously win a championship. That’s what every player wants to do – win. We fell short this season, but it’s not for lack of hard work and commitment. We’re committed every game, every training season. There was just a little piece, something extra that we needed this season, so yeah, that’s what happened.”
On the game and whether it was the best Houston has played against Los Angeles in a while: “I mean, you can’t really go off one game. It was an open game. I think from the start, it was pretty open and when it’s hot, you have to take your chances. That’s what it’s about because obviously both teams are tired; both teams are dying from the heat. They got that one chance and they scored. We had a couple of chances where we might have, could have snapped a goal, but we didn’t get it. That’s football. But, to put it all on one game and say that we improved – at the same time we lost, end of story. The name of the game is to win and get three points.”
On how the team will approach the final game of the season at Colorado: “We want to win. It doesn’t matter who we play. It doesn’t matter that we’re out of the playoffs and that our season is done after that. We want to win. We still want to get three points and finish on a high note because at the end of the day, people will go on to different teams. Some people will stay, obviously; some people will go different ways. So this is the last time this team in this locker room will be together, so we want to end it on a high note. The only way that footballers, soccer players, can do that is to win, so hopefully we can do that next Sunday, get three points and end on a very high note.”
Houston Dynamo GK Joe Willis
On the previous times playing LA, and taking positives out of this one: “It’s hard to take positives from any of these losses at this point. It’s the end of the season, out of the playoffs. Like I said, it’s frustrating. It doesn’t really matter how we played. At the end of the day, the result is a 1-0 loss. Maybe once I look over the game again I’ll have some positives to take away, but right now it’s just frustrating.”
On his double save against MF Emmanuel Boateng in the first half: “They had some good attacking pieces. Boateng, he has some speed. They slipped him in. Jalil (Anibaba) did a good job of cutting off the back post and giving him a tough angle. He basically forced him to shoot towards the near post, so I got down to my right. I probably should’ve held it, but I was able to get up quick and he hit it again, and I went down to my left and [the ball] popped out again. It was a frantic little melee I guess, but we were able to get out of the half with a clean sheet.”
On how the backline played in front of him: “I thought they played very well. Like I said, LA has a lot of different dangerous attacking pieces. They have a lot of different strategies to get at you and for the most part I thought our defenders did very well keeping them at bay. David was in there using his body, banging with Gordon all night. All the guys were doing great at tracking the runners and keeping it organized, and not letting too many balls get in behind. I think they frustrated the LA attack for the most part.”
Houston Dynamo MF Andrew Wenger
On the troubles of the Dynamo attack: “Nothing specific. It’s probably been similar to the last couple of games. We’re not pulling off plays. We’re not playing with enough urgency, and that happens.”
On the LA defense not closing down as much as other teams: “I think that probably has more to do with the heat here. They weren’t used to it and you saw probably after the 35th minute, they were pretty tired. Mauro did a pretty good job early on in the game running the channels after I played the ball in behind a lot. So you’re running guys down, and they’re getting tired. Whenever someone gets tired, especially teams that are coming here, they’re going to sit back, and they’re going to drop back deeper. And then they scored the goal sitting deeper. It just gives us less room to operate. That’s something as professionals we need to go with.”
On last minute lineup changes effecting the game: “We’ve been together since July, we should still be able to operate and pull off plays. Maybe. That’s possible, but at the end of the day, there’s 11 guys on the field, one of us has to go off and pull off a play. That didn’t happen.”
On going forward and taking positives: “There’s been a very good [run of results] on the road. We’ve been good. We’ve been compact and organized defensively, and we’re still picking up some goals. That gives us a good base to play off of and go forward. As we get better and more organized defensively, we’ll be able to take more risks going forward. That’ll be exciting.”
On finishing the season at Colorado: “They were here the other week. They walked out of here with a win. We feel that we deserve to get them back.”
Dynamo MF Yair Arboleda
On making his debut: “I’m very grateful that I made my debut with the first team. I’m happy with what I did on the field but very disappointed with the final score. I feel like the game could have gone our way because we played well. Now we have to work harder to finish the season with a victory.”
On the level of play in MLS: “This league has a lot of good players, some who have played in Europe. They are very talented, but I’m also confident in my ability and skill to play at this level and in the future at a higher level.”
