QUOTE SHEET
Real Salt Lake 0-5 Colorado Rapids
Rio Tinto Stadium; Sandy, Utah
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Head Coach Freddy Juarez
On the game:
“Horrible game plan by me. I didn’t have the guys prepared. Colorado was pretty good tonight. We started off poor and could never recover. We wanted to start the second half a little bit better, but we gave up a goal. We went and made some changes, and we didn’t help ourselves with the red card.”
On the post-game skirmish:
“I’d rather not talk about it. You don’t like people taunting. We’ve never taunted, when we’ve gone and won multiple times in Colorado. There was one player that was taunting. When you’re involved in soccer, the player knows what that means. It’s a young player, I get it, but you don’t do that type of stuff, and people that understand soccer knew what he was doing. That’s something that shouldn’t have happened. In the heat of the moment, players get upset at that.”
On the lack of rotation:
“It should have been fine. Colorado had seven players that played four games in 15 days. We gave most of that squad a whole game off, so we believe they should have been ready. It was more mental than anything else. They were a team that came not scared of anything. They have been playing well, by the way. They haven’t been winning, but they had three ties in a row playing good soccer. It’s a good team. I know a lot of people think that because of records you don’t think a team is good, but it’s a good team. They brought a lot of energy and made it tough on us. When you play a team like that, psychologically our guys took it a little light and they came at us with everything. It’s a good team. I just didn’t have the guys ready.”
On doing things differently in hindsight:
“We got scored on in the first three minutes. It’s something that happened against Kansas City. I take responsibility for those, because after guys come out of the locker room, they should be ready to go. The speed of play. I should have told them: be a little bit more direct if they come at us with a lot of pressure, then we have to go long and really push up. It was a lot of things that went wrong today. I picked the lineup and the game plan, and it didn’t work obviously.”
On moving forward:
“There’s not a whole lot I can say now. You can’t go in there in the heat of the moment and say dumb things. I have to analyze it. My main point to the guys, if I took any positive out of this, was that we never want to play a man down. The guys that did kept moving, tackling, trying. It’s never easy. That’s a positive for me, that the players continued to go. We just need Douglas to mature from that. We told him already in the locker room. Now we get some time to reflect. Some time to breathe a little bit. Time to think. It gives the staff some time to prepare, not only just think about regen, but put a plan together in a few training sessions. Before the last break, we did a lot of attacking and we haven’t had the time to organize ourselves defensively, which has always been a strength of ours. It’s just been a minus day one, then into regen, so we haven’t had the time. I think we have to get back to our principles and have three or four good training sessions that reminds us of where we’re at.”
On the first goal:
“He did touch it. They were smart. They threw two or three guys around that impeded his movement. That for any goalkeeper is difficult. His deflection threw Donny off guard, and it led to that goal. It’s not easy for any goalie to deal with any scrum in there, having to jump and get guys off of you. We look at it. I don’t even remember the first one in the second half. I don’t even know how they got there. I just remember the guy closing in on the back post. We’ll look at tonight and tomorrow and see how we can improve this.”
Midfielder Damir Kreilach
On the performance:
“It was overall a bad performance, for sure. I apologize to the fans, because it’s not nice to lose 5-0 especially at home. To give up the goal in the second minute, it shows how ready we were today. It wasn’t the best, and now we have to stay positive and put heads up to prepare for the game against Vancouver. The only way is to get three points in these games. We have to keep going and be positive. It’s just one game. It’s not the best and not nice to lose 5-0, but right now it is what it is. We have to establish and go forward.”
On moving forward:
“It’s just one game. At the end of the day, we lost three points, whether it’s 1-0 or 5-0, you lost. It wasn’t the best. It was a bad game, and a bad performance from all of us. We have to see our mistakes and try to not do the same things next Saturday. We have to fight in our game against Vancouver next week, and then push ourselves to the limit to get three points.”
On thinking about the LAFC game:
“We are not a team that underrates and disrespects some teams. We know that Colorado is a good team. It doesn’t matter that we beat them the last couple games. We outplayed them in those games, but we know that they have good players. They showed that today. We were bad. We gave everything, but it wasn’t the best. We had a bad day, and I have to say that we have to go through this game and be positive. The season is very long. We have 12 games left, so anything is possible. At the end of the day, it’s just one game.”
On the importance of a break:
“It will be good especially after the loss today. We have to see all the mistakes that we made, and now we have one week to prepare ourselves for the next game. We have to do some tactical things, especially defensively, to be better. That is our next goal. That is what all of us, as a team, know that we have to be better.”
On bouncing back:
“At halftime, we thought first we have to fight and maybe we could turn the game around. In the second half, we conceded the third goal and then the red card made it difficult to do something special and get some goals. We fought, but today it wasn’t enough. We have to keep going, put our heads up and keep moving forward.”
On why the game plan failed:
"I mean when you concede a goal in the second minute all the plans are gone, that's how it is, not just in soccer, but in sports overall. Then we conceded the second one and of course it was hard to come back. At halftime, as I said, we had a plan to score first and maybe to turn the game around, but it didn't work and we lost 5-0. As I said, to play 30 minutes with one man down is especially hard, even more so when you're losing 4-0. It is what it is, it's just one game, it's not nice and we as a team apologize to the fans, because it wasn't fun to watch. Now what we have to do it shows a reaction next Saturday and get three points."
