CARSON, Calif. – Bruce Arena held no punches on the LA Galaxy’s 1-1 draw with Chivas USA on Sunday afternoon.
The Galaxy boss described his team’s performance as poor on the day and admitted that the Galaxy did a “terrible” job of closing out the game as an 89th minute goal by Carlos Alvarez negated a goal from Jack McBean that was scored six minutes earlier.
Below are Arena’s thoughts on the Galaxy’s 1-1 draw…
(On his general thoughts on the performance…)
ARENA: “I think it was a poor performance on our part today. Bad game, a lot of fouls, a lot of time wasting. Not well played on our part, and a terrible effort in closing the game out at the end."
(On whether fitness was a reason for the poor showing…)
ARENA: “No.”
(On the performance of referee Ricardo Salazar…)
ARENA: “He could have done a little bit better job understanding the game from the beginning, with the fouling and the time wasting and that. He punished them for some of the fouling, so we certainly can't point to the referee.”
(On what he attributed the poor play to…)
ARENA: “Not playing well. It has nothing to do with fitness, we played a game Wednesday obviously it's a little bit difficult week for us this time of year, but we didn't play well. Our passing was poor, we didn't play well today.”
(On why the team played poorly….)
ARENA: “Certainly give [Chivas USA] credit, they played real hard they got in on every play. There was a lot of fouling, I don't even know what the fouls would be, but he didn't get all of them either. They fouled us as much as they could, and got away with as much as they could. That's all part of the game, it's not surprising. Going into the game, their style of play, that's what we anticipated. There’s no excuse on our part.”
(On if the players took the victory for granted…)
ARENA: “Yeah I would say that and it was just a sloppy effort right there at the end of the game. I don't think...I don't even know if our goalkeeper faced a shot all day to be honest with you, until the end there. We didn't do well.”
(On Jack McBean's play…)
ARENA: “Jack did well. It was going to take an ugly goal, in all honesty. They had everyone behind the ball; it wasn't going to be easy. Our passing wasn't good today and our play in and around the penalty area wasn't good. Not surprising that the goal was going to look like that at the end.”
(On the reason for the Colin Clark substitution…)
ARENA: “I didn't think he was effective and I made that change. The way we looked to start the second half is the way we played the other night, in all honesty.”
(On the change at Chivas USA between 2012 and 2013…)
ARENA: “I think it's too early in the year to say that. That's not for me to even comment on.”
