LA Galaxy 4, Orlando City SC 3
Sunday, July 29, 2018 – 6:30 p.m. PT
2018 MLS Regular Season
StubHub Center – Los Angeles, Calif.
LA GALAXY HEAD COACH SIGI SCHMID
On having to come from behind and getting a win at home:
“I tell the team if we keep doing this, just now after the game, that I’ll be 90 by the time the season’s over. It’s great for the fans. It’s great for Television and all of that stuff, but it’s really hard on me emotionally. Zlatan [Ibrahimovic], obviously, that’s what he does. He finishes. The two headers were great, good pass from Ola Kamara on the second one, [Dave] Romney found him on that first one a little bit. But, I’m not happy that we’re always in the position that we have to come back.”
On the look of frustration with his defense:
“Frustration with the defense, yes; today for some reason I just thought we looked tired. I thought we were the team that flew across country, not them. Sacha Kljestan was all over the place, running everywhere and really dominating the game on us in the first half. We’ve tried different formations, different options. We know offensively the way we’re playing is the best way for us. Offensively when you look at our run of these last nine games, and the goals that we’ve scored, we’re almost averaging three goals a game, so that’s pretty impressive. But, just defensively, we need to defend better. Our defending got better in the second half, because we did a better job holding on to the ball. Dave Romney was more engaged, Sebastian Lletget helped us when he got on the field; I felt Servando [Carrasco] helped us as well.”
On Giovanni’s Dos Santos performance and substitution:
“I wish he would’ve used his right foot a second time. I think he would’ve had two goals. But again, I’ve been very pleased with Giovanni [Dos Santos] effort and everything else. He asked to come out at that time point. He was starting to feel a little bit tight and didn’t want to get into a situation where he caused himself an injury that would keep him out for a long time.”
On reinforcing the LA Galaxy defensive backline:
“We’re looking. I would love to get reinforcements in the back, but we’re limited in terms of the salary cap as to what we can do. We’re in a situation where we probably have to offload a player before we can add a player. We’re trying and just not having any luck doing that.”
On Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s performance this season:
“He’s the most physically imposing player this league has ever had at forward. You go all the way back to the old days and you talk about Mamadou Diallo and some people like that who were physically beasts and big guys and had a little bit of pace. When [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic posts up, it’s like Shaquille O’Neal or people like that; you just don’t move them. And, what we’ve learned as a team is that we’ve tried to take advantage of that. So, sometimes it’s not the most eye pleasing football that you want to see, but it’s the most effective football for us. So, obviously when you look at the first goal and [Dave] Romney sort of floats the ball up to him, that’s not something you would do to [Ola] Kamara, or you would do to another player. It’s just his ability to impose his physical strength on the game. On top of that he still has vision, and on top of that, he’s driven. He’s a motivated guy.”
LA GALAXY FORWARD ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIĆ
On his performance:
“It was a good day. For the team. For me. I scored three goals, had one assist. We won the game. If we wouldn’t have won the game, it doesn’t matter how many goals or assists you do, to win is something different. I think we started the first half poor. Very poor. We conceded easy goals. I think that was lack of willingness, lack of concentration, energy, motivation. In the second, we showed what we wanted. We went out and we went for the kill.”
On if he feels like he can do anything:
“Please don’t say it like that. You make me feel alive now. I will ask for more so don’t do that. I feel good. My teammates are helping me. Like I said last week, physically I feel good. I’m training good. I don’t miss one training. I’m playing all the games. I have a good balance. I take care of my body. My age is what it is, I’m still proving even if my age what it is, I’m still proving that it’s not about the age. It’s about how you prepare and how you take care of yourself. People were worried how old I am. But don’t worry about my age. You should worry when I slow down.”
On his effect on the LA Galaxy:
“Every game I try to make the difference. I try to do what I’m good at. I try to help my teammates in the best way. I was tired in the last 10-15 minutes otherwise I would have had five goals. So I’m sorry that I missed the two opportunities that I had, because I would kill that also. I’m more angry for that than the three goals because that’s my mentality in my situation. I always want more. I always strive for more and I’m never satisfied. Maybe that’s why I arrived and I did what I did in my career. But I’m happy for the win like I said. Last couple weeks, we are playing good games. LAFC was less good, but still we got a point even though we were the less good team. But I think we have nine games without losing, so that’s good. So if we can continue like that, it’ll be a good season.”
On if the team is comfortable coming from behind:
“Absolutely not. We had a couple of games like that in the beginning, but we were not winning. I would rather lead the game and then win the game. So it’s a different game when you’re losing, but today we kept patient. Every time we went down with one goal, we were patient. We still believed in what we were doing. In the second half, we had patience and we scored the winning goal. We could have scored the winning goal.”
LA GALAXY MIDFIELDER SEBASTIAN LLETGET
On how big of an impact Zlatan Ibrahimović makes:
“We know how big of a player is going to be for us. But as a team and as a collective we have to get better at not conceding goals and showing up at the end of the game and waking up. I think we have to do a better job of that. I think we all know that. That was the boss’ message at halftime – to wake up and show a little more energy. Thankfully we did wake up in the second half.”
On how Zlatan inspires the team:
“He definitely, as a striker, gives you that hope that at any chance the game can switch. No matter how bad you’re playing. So as long as we get the ball up there and we start combining the players that we have and the talent that we have, he’s going to finish things off.”
On the team’s offensive form at the moment:
“I know in this team, a lot of teams can’t say this, is that we know we are going to score goals. It’s just the other side of things that we have to get together. To win a championship in modern day football, we’ve got to collectively defend and we’ve got to help each other out. But thankfully I’ve been getting more minutes, I’ve been feeling great. I had a little bit of a hiccup but I’m feeling great and I’m glad we got the win today.”
LA GALAXY DEFENDER ASHLEY COLE
On what has to change in the defense:
“I don’t know. We have to thank Ibra. Since he’s come in, he’s scored important goals from us. Dug us out of very, very deep holes. We keep conceding silly and sloppy goals and against good teams. Against teams like Kansas City or Atlanta, we’d get punished. When you concede three goals again…consistently conceding three goals, whether you win or not, you can’t be happy.”
On how frustrating the defense is:
“We go into the game confident. We don’t want to concede goals and we want to win games, we get the players to score goals…but then we concede sloppy, silly goals. It’s difficult. It’s hard to swallow. I stand here in a bad mood, but at the end of the day we won the game and we’re climbing the standings.”
On the LA Galaxy being a second half game:
“It’s a kind of change of mentality, I don’t know. We think we’re OK down goals, and we have to come back and play better. But mentally, we have to be right from the start. I can’t remember too many games where we’ve started off really well. But I think if we want to keep climbing the table and not relying on Ibra, then we have to stop allowing goals.”
ORLANDO CITY SC HEAD COACH JAMES O'CONNOR
On tonight's game:
"It definitely hurts. When you look at the quality of play you can take a lot away from our first half performance but you can't come to Galaxy and score three goals and not get anything. You cannot score three goals away from home but especially to the LA Galaxy and not get anything you can't defend like that. Individually it's really, really frustrating for us to get that."
On the team's performance:
"I think in the first half we were really pleased with how we played, the opportunities we created we felt as if we had a good grip on the game and in the second half they obviously get a very early goal which from my stand point was a very poor goal but we have to defend way better than that. We can't defend like that and expect to get anything. We you are playing like that going forward, creating chances and scoring goals we have to have a good run you can't come to LA Galaxy score three goals and not get anything it ridiculous."
ORLANDO CITY SC MIDFIELDER SACHA KLEJSTAN
On tonight's game:
"We had some very good stretches of play especially in the first half but we defended pretty poorly tonight and to go on the road get three goals and not get anything out of this game is very disappointing."
On the team's mentality:
"It is important to try to draw confidence from anything right now because when you lose this many games the confidence will start to drop so we have to stick together as a group and remember the good moments of this game and not the bad ones."
ORLANDO CITY SC MIDFIELDER TONY ROCHA
On tonight's game:
"It is a tough result being away from home and scoring three goals we think we deserved a result."
On his performance:
"I thought I did well but the loss over shadows my performance and it was unfortunate that we didn't get a result."
On the positives of the game:
"It is a tough place to play and to be able to score three goals against them and potentially more is definitely a positive we can take from the game."
On giving up the lead:
"We just have to do a better job of maintaining the game and maintaining the lead and keeping the ball and not conceding goals."
