SANDY, Utah – LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena’s comments from LA’s 2-1 aggregate defeat to Real Salt Lake in the Western Conference Semifinal.
(On the team’s defeat…)
ARENA: “We didn’t play well tonight or over 210 minutes. We really had our opportunities on Sunday to have a cushion coming in here and didn’t do it. Tonight we failed on defensive set pieces. The win made the game terrible with the field conditions and all that, so it was a really sloppy game, a scrappy game, and they were more opportune on their set pieces than we were, and it was the difference in the game.”
(On whether the season was a failure…)
ARENA: “I don’t know about that, but these are tight games in the playoffs.”
(On the play of Keane and Donovan…)
ARENA: “They were not factors tonight for us. Give Salt Lake credit, they played them well.”
(On Penedo’s play…)
ARENA: “Penedo had a very good game, you said? He was alright.”
The conditions were both for teams with the hard field. This field is like playing on the street and it makes for balls bouncing a lot. The conditions were tough, but both teams have to play on these conditions and they played better than we did. They were very direct, they put balls behind us, put our backs under pressure, scrapped a lot, and were hectic in their attack and created some opportunities from that.”
(On the second goal…)
ARENA: “The last goal, the referee [calls] the whole night like it’s a boxing match and he calls that foul, but in all fairness, we shouldn't position ourselves to be called for a foul down there and they score. We had to be smart to place this game into penalty kicks once we got to overtime, and we didn’t get it done.”
