CAROLINA, Puerto Rico -- LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena and Landon Donovan participated in a press conference held at the team hotel in Puerto Rico on Tuesday prior to departing for training.
With Arena and Donovan speaking, I decided to break up the press conference into two blog posts.
Below are Arena's thoughts from the presser...
(On whether he’s expecting a similar match to the last match against Puerto Rico…)
ARENA: “No two games are alike. My expectations are that it will be a very difficult game. Puerto Rico continues to show over the last couple of weeks that they have a good team as they continue to move up the ladder in their league. We continue to improve as a team and my expectations are that it’s going to be a good game and a difficult game.”
(On the possibilities that Arena may opt for a similar lineup as last match…)
ARENA: “We’ll have some different players on the field that we did in the first game. But we’ll have a mixture of players.”
(On the squad brought to Puerto Rico…)
ARENA: “We’ve brought a team here that we think can win. It’s that simple and it’s the same thing as we did some weeks ago. We’re positioning a team on the field that we think can be successful.”
(On balancing the squad due to the playoff chase…)
ARENA: “We’re just in a week where we’re playing three games. We need to turn around quickly and play at home on Saturday. We think that you have to have the right kind of balance in your team to be able to play the three games in a short period of time and that’s what we’re doing.”
(On whether or not Donovan will play against the Islanders…)
ARENA: “We hope Donovan plays tomorrow.”
(On McBean's growth...)
ARENA: 'We feel like Jack is going to be a good player. He's still a little bit young, we haven't had the chance to give him extended minutes this year, but certainly in the game some weeks ago, he played quite well as did Jose Villarreal. We think that an important part of building our league and building our club is to develop players out of our Academy program and that's where Jack and Jose come form and it's important. Not only that, but a lot of local players out of Southern California are becoming important members on our roster, but our vision is ultimately to have Homegrown players playing for the first team and I think Jack and Jose are examples of that."
(On striving to advance...)
ARENA: "We think that the competition is important and that's why we're here. We know that tomorrow's game is not going to be an easy game by any means. We'll put a group on the field that we think can win and are motivated to win. There's a lot of games left to play in the group before it's decided so we're very focused on the game tomorrow and we want to position our team to advance."
