LA Galaxy Postgame Quote Sheet
LA Galaxy 0, Portland Timbers 1
Sunday, March 12, 2017
2017 MLS Regular Season
StubHub Center – Los Angeles, Calif.
HEAD REFEREE BALDOMERO TOLEDO
(via Pool Reporter)
Why were each of the yellow cards given to Van Damme?
“The first caution was given for dissent, the second caution was given for stopping a promising attack (attempting to trip).”
Did Van Damme make contact on the play with Chara on the play leading to the first yellow card and/or with Guzmán on the play leading to the second yellow card?
“Van Damme was given a caution for dissent. On the second caution, Van Damme attempted trip Guzmán which stopped a promising attack. Guzmán avoided the contact and fell awkwardly.”
LA GALAXY HEAD COACH CURT ONALFO
On the two yellow cards issued to Jelle Van Damme:
“I haven’t seen the plays. I haven’t been able to see the replays. I was told that the players dove, so that’s unfortunate. But he did get a yellow card for dissent and we can prevent that. We dug ourselves a hole, regardless of if the referee made a bad judgement or not. We can’t put ourselves in that situation. We’re at home. We need points. And there in the 34th minute, we’re playing with ten men.”
On how the team should have defended Portland’s successful counter attack:
“It was a corner kick, an attacking corner. You just have to break up the play. There’s players on top of the defense that have to break up the play. Then you have to run hard back and it was a bad goal to concede early in the game.”
On why Giovani dos Santos was subbed off at the half:
“Gio has a slight strain to his hamstring or just tightness. We’ll know more tomorrow, but he couldn’t go in the second half so we had to make that change.”
On the team’s effort while trailing and playing with 10-men:
“Just like I told the team when we got in the locker room, the effort and the way the worked, they were warriors. Sebastian Lletget led by example. I thought he was excellent. I thought he was the best player on the field in every aspect. A play that draws a lot of attention to me is when he has to run back, basically the length of the entire field, to help make sure that we didn’t concede that second goal and to keep us in the game. And that’s what happens when you grind it out and you do all these things that you’ve got to do. Winning games is hard work. You’ve got to position yourself to make a play and we had some set pieces that we’ve got to capitalize on. Jose [Villarreal] has the late header and maybe you walk away with a point and you’re feeling a little better. But I’m very pleased and proud of the effort that the guys put in and that’s what I’m going to focus on.”
On how hard it’s been to start the season with injuries, suspensions and youth:
“You’re always going to deal with adversity through the course of the season. You don’t want to draw it up where it’s this early. I actually look at it differently. We’ll be better for this. We got some players some minutes and they performed well. That helps create depth to our team. We were down five players today. That’s never easy. As we add the players back from injury and suspension and you look at performances like Sebastian had and Ema [Boateng] who was very good again today and had an excellent week of training. And all of the sudden, you have options and it makes you better. It’s unfortunate. I’m a forward-looking person, I don’t look back. My job is to continue to make the group better and that’s my focus.”
On Rafael Garcia:
“He wears his heart on his sleeve and he put everything into the game. He’s a warrior.”
On Clement Diop’s performance and the decision to play him:
“He’s an exciting young goalkeeper who’s only going to get better. I thought he had a good game. His passing game was good with his feet. He’s a guy that can make saves and I thought he had a good performance. We’re dealing with a lot of adversity right now which means we’re testing our depth and we’re making our depth better. I want competition in positions and I felt like it was a good opportunity to give Diop the game. He’s going to play for us. He’s going to play games this year so if you just look at the track record, there’s often injuries to goalkeepers and you need them to have minutes. I’m confident in him and it’s harder when you’re going on the road. It’s better to give a game like that to a young goalkeeper at home and create competition in that position.
LA GALAXY GOALKEEPER CLEMENT DIOP
On when he learned he was going to get the start and how he felt about his performance:
“I learned about it on Friday before practice. I don’t care about my performance, since we lost, I didn’t do well enough. So I hope we will win the next game, that’s it. If we lose 1-0, if we tie 1-1, maybe I did a good job. But it’s not a good job when you lose 1-0. It’s not enough.”
On his save to keep the score from going to 2-0:
“I tried to keep the team in the game as much as I could. We put in a hard fight and a great effort, but we lost so the result wasn’t here and we know that we must win in Salt Lake. Everybody knows that.”
On how encouraged he was by his team’s effort down the stretch:
“I think we showed character. I think we showed that we are a tough team to play against. And we will never give up until the end of the season.”
LA GALAXY DEFENDER RAFAEL GARCIA
On fighting until the end:
“It’s in our DNA. Unfortunately, we went down a player. We had to roll up our sleeves and fight. We’re proud with the effort but we’re not happy with the result. We obviously wanted to get three points tonight.”
On how to get results:
“I think it comes with time, getting to know each other. It’s group that maybe hasn’t spent a lot of time together. With that being said, there’s no excuses. We have to come out there and we have to defend our colors especially at home and like I said earlier, we are not worried about it. The results will come.”
On Portland’s counter attack:
“To be fair Portland is a pretty good team attacking. They have some speed up top and maybe with the red card we were a little late on transitioning on a few plays. But with that being said, I think the effort from the guys tonight was outstanding and we’re satisfied with that but we know we could have done better.”
On the play where he slipped but then saved Portland’s clear chance on goal and what he was thinking:
“Get up as quickly as possible. As the play was unfolding I slipped and it’s part of it. I cleared it fortunately but that was a play that could have been avoided.”
LA GALAXY MIDFIELDER SEBASTIAN LLETGET
On playing well despite going 0-2-0 to start:
“That’s what I think [that the team has played well]. I know it’s two games and on paper, we’re at home, but there are a lot of positives we take out of these last two games. We didn’t finish our chances and we were that close. I thought we adapted well to the game considering we go down to ten men, which I haven’t done in my time with the club, but I thought we handled it pretty well.”
Clement Diop:
“I think he’s fantastic. I think we have two great goalkeepers, but in this game, I think Curt [Onalfo] felt he was better suited. He couldn’t do much on the goal, and we should have stopped that a long time ago. I thought he did fantastic.”
On getting the offense going:
“I think we should play a lot more like we did in the second half. I think we have the ability, but that’s not going to win you games. It’s the heart and the character that we know we have on this team, we just have to show it. But we grew a lot today. Moving forward, I think we’ll be OK. I’m not looking to much into the loss today.”
LA GALAXY DEFENDER DANIEL STERES
On how proud he was of team’s character:
“Really proud. We put it all out there and fought really hard. I thought we were still the better team at times, doing what we needed to do even though we were down a man. We had our chances at the end and limited them to some tough chances. They had a couple of breakthroughs, of course, but we were pushing the game and trying to get something out of it. I’m really proud of the character we showed and I think we built something as a team today even though it didn’t go our way.”
On Jelle Van Damme’s cards:
“I honestly haven’t seen the replays. It didn’t look that bad. They looked like break-up counter plays. I can see why he (Toledo) probably thought they were fouls. It sounds like it was nothing on him (Van Damme) and hopefully there’s a chance we can get him back quicker than we expect.”
On the captain’s arm band:
“I wore it in the second half. It’s an honor. To be honest, it’s kind of the state of our squad and what we went through. I tried to take it upon myself and lead that group even though we were going to be in a fight the rest of the way.”
PORTLAND TIMBERS HEAD COACH CALEB PORTER
On the game not being a pretty game:
"It's not about being pretty it's about winning. On the road especially you have to dig deep to win games. I thought our guys did that. We had some new guys in the lineup, some injuries to manage this week, Marco Farfan makes his debut at 18 years old and he looks like he fits right in. Ben Zemanski has to come into the game before the half. He wasn't even on the bench last week. These are things you need out of a team and these are things you need to do to win games. You need to grind, you need to stick together and you need guys to come up with big plays like Jake [Gleeson] did at the end of the game making that save. Obviously there are things to improve on like every game win, lose or draw we are going to look at that. Obviously we should have put the game to bed a lot sooner and it would have been like you said 'pretty'"
On the backline:
"This is a true team our depth was tested. I have been talking about it all preseason the fact that we have a better bench so we had to put our money where our mouth is a little bit in this game and play some guys that haven't played and I thought you saw a guy like Roy Miller who wasn't the sexiest signing in terms of people talking about it. You saw what he can do when he steps in a game. He got the job done with two days of training. I am really pleased with him, Marco [Farfan], Ben Zemanski and the entire team. It takes a team to win entire games on the road. It takes 11 guys and the subs and we weren't able to do that in 17 games last year so I am real pleased that we were able to do that in the first game. There is a reason in '15 and '14 that we were the best road team in the league and I think that will be the case again this year if we keep playing the way we played today."
PORTLAND TIMBERS DEFENDER MARCO FARFAN:
On his MLS debut:
"It's a dream come true. I don't think a kid can dream something better than this debuting, playing 90 minutes and getting a clean sheet with the guys out there it was just fantastic."
On whether the preseason game against the Galaxy helped him tonight:
Yeah, I came out with more confidence than two weeks ago. I knew that I can play against these guys just keep the tempo and play my game.
PORTLAND MIDFIELDER DIEGO CHARA:
(Translated from Spanish)
On not pressing the Galaxy more:
"It's not that we didn't pressure them. Galaxy is at home and tried to tie the game and in some occasions we would lose the ball and that gave them the opportunity to send in crosses into the box and cause problems for us."
On the team's chemistry:
"Sometimes when players have played with each other for a long time they play in automatic. We have players that are young and new that did their best. I think that it was a good game for us. We lost the ball a bit too much but the important thing was the win."
On the game opening up more in the second half:
" The Galaxy was looking for the tying goal and we gave away the ball too much so we had to be more defensive. I think that opened up the game more. We also had a lot of chances but we just couldn't put them away."
PORTLAND TIMBERS MIDFIELDER DARLINGTON NAGBE
On how it feels to get a win in their first road game of the season:
“It feels great. You always start off and get a win. You know we’re 2-0. But obviously it feels good and considering last year where we didn’t get the first one. It feels good and all the guys worked hard and we put in a good fight.”
On the Timbers’ backline and how they fared in their first time playing together:
“We definitely felt comfortable. It’s a lot of new pieces. They have Marco [Farfan] in their playing his first game and he did a tremendous job so I’m proud of him and the whole team.
On how it feels to start the season with two wins:
“It feels great. We’ve never started off 2-0-0 before, so it feels great. Mentally it gives us a lot of confidence at home and on the road.”
