Head Coach Caleb Porter
Opening statement
[It’s a] Disappointing result. That's a game we should win. We were at home. No disrespect to Montreal [Impact], but we played a team that, you know, if we're on our level, we should beat, and we dropped three points tonight. It's really disappointing, I know the guys are disappointed. You know, it happens. Unfortunately, it happens in MLS, you see these results. But, if you want to be a team that's fighting for trophies at the end, it can’t happen to us. Unfortunately, we dropped a game that we should win, and so now it's going to get a little harder and now we have to make up for it by going and winning on the road. It's that simple.
On what was lacking offensively for Crew SC in tonight’s match
I always believe that you get what you put in in a match and in a season, and you have to fight for what you get [...] it’d be easy to look at the stats on the day, and obviously we outshot them [Montreal Impact] by double, we had 60-40 possession, and so on and so forth, but I still didn’t think we put into the game what we needed to, to ensure the three points. We could’ve got out of there with a draw. Yeah, we can talk about the penalty kick, which again, I don’t know how they overturned that – it’s not clear and obvious. We could talk about that, we could talk about all the chances that we had, but at the end of the day, we fell short tonight. We fell short [on] both sides of the ball, we gave up an early goal that we shouldn’t give up, we battled back, which was good, but then [in] the second half we couldn’t find another goal. Unfortunately, that’s the way the game went, and we didn’t get the result. So, we have to now recover [and in] three days, go on the road and play one of the best teams in the League. We have to make up for today, because when you don’t take care of business at home against teams you should beat, then now you have to do it the hard way. And so, the guys are going to have to now go and grind on the road, and we have a bunch of games coming up on the road, and we have to make up for this.
On how Crew SC played in the beginning of the of the match
I thought we pressed well. Obviously, we saw on the film the way that they play, they over play out of the back. I thought we were able to step up and turn them over time and again. So, I thought we executed really all game in that regard. We just didn’t, once we’d win the ball, create enough in transition and I think our quality to goal - once we won the ball- was good enough with as many times as we turned them over high. We have to be better in transition. I thought early on in terms of playing out, the goal was to soften the press. I thought for some reason we, early in the game, tried to over play which wasn’t what we planned to do. Then when we started kicking, obviously we were against the wind a little bit, we weren’t kicking the ball in the right spots, we wanted to go in behind the line to G [Gyasi Zardes] so that now we can stretch them out, win the seconds [balls] and now get on the ball. From there, once we softened the press, we wanted to play.
But we just had it wrong, we had it wrong to start the match. It was too loose, a little sloppy on the ball, we gave some balls away in transition. The goal came off a throw-in. [Lassi] Lappalainen pulls off the line and then literally turns and threads a ball through our back four. So, it’s really a situation that we have to do better [in] honestly. It’s not a difficult play to manage, we just kind of switched off for a second. We didn’t pick him up and then we didn’t drop our lines quick enough, so we got stung there. I firmly believe that those things happen just when you’re not in the right mindset. I’ve seen this result a lot, you see it every week, you see it every week. This is like your classic MLS result where you have a team at the top of the table playing a team at the bottom of the table, it’s a total trap game and you see it all the time. We’re better than that, we’re better than that. The best teams don’t lose this game, but you do see a lot of teams have this result happen. We don’t want this result to happen, especially with the goals that we have and the standards that we have. We know that they had some talent, they showed that. Even in a game where we didn’t play as well as we should’ve, we dominated the game. But at the end of the day, you can’t expect to win unless you put in the work, unless you’re ready to fight for things, unless you’re going to execute and show that quality and unless you’re going to respect the opponent.
Defender Jonathan Mensah
On how Crew SC can return to form defensively
We’ve done a good job from the start of the season - the restart - we just need to get back to what we do best. We need to watch film and get together again and start doing what we were doing in our previous games. We know we can do better; we can’t really lose a game like this. Obviously, we lost it. We need to put that behind us and go into the next game very strong, because if you want to be a championship team, you need to be consistent, and we haven’t been that in recent games. We need to pick it up and do better.
Forward Gyasi Zardes
On Crew SC’s current position in MLS standings
We were at the top of the table for a majority of the season, but the biggest game is this weekend. We play Orlando [City SC]. It’s a perfect opportunity to stay at the top of the table. We were unlucky tonight, and I think it’s extremely important that we start focusing on Orlando, because a lot of things depend on that game result.
