LOS ANGELES GALAXY HEAD COACH GUILLERMO BARROS SCHELOTTO
On the what the team did really well tonight:
“I think almost everything. Seven days ago I came here and said we deserved to lose against San Jose, we played so bad after 5-10 minutes, but today we played 90 minutes. The team played very well, we fought, and even we can play better. If we keep fighting and we can keep playing like today, we will be a very special team. Today was a very important game, for the regular season, for the fans, for us, for them, for the city. We played really well, fighting, and playing, looking to win and I think the atmosphere in the stadium was wonderful, even with everything that happened during the game, how important it is for the people for the fans, saying LAFC and LA Galaxy, they have black jerseys, we have white, and the team played how we wanted, which is very important.”
On the intensity of the game:
“I think everyone left the game on the field. I felt like yesterday that we were going to play a different game, we were going to play a really good team, a really good coach, but we were confident during the week. I feel very happy for the team, I could see after the San Jose game that everyone was very sad and everyone was waiting for this game, to give the people the result from today, and I feel very happy for them.”
On the confidence of Zlatan:
“I think the confidence for Ibrahimovic is getting better when the team plays well. If we can support the Ibra level, he is wonderful, so we need to build a team for him. The best thing he has is in the box, or near the box, but sometimes the team doesn’t play really well and we miss the player like Ibra, who is wonderful, not just today, but always, his career is fantastic and today he was the best player on the field.”
On Julian Araujo playing midfield:
“Araujo played there because he trained there during the week. Before he came to the Los Angeles Galaxy he used to play that position, like a wing, and when he got here he started to play a defender, but I think he can play a little more high, or a little more back.”
On the Western Conference race:
“These three points are very important. We missed the three points last Friday, but we played bad and deserved that, but today we won and we deserved that and we are fighting for the our place, and we need to think about our future and the playoffs.
On practice this week:
“You have to change the mentality, change something for the players, you can talk to them, maybe some players are looking for something more, looking to fight, so you prepare the trainers. Everything we did during the week, was don’t think about the result from last Friday, we are going to play the city derby, and we need to be ready, we need to recover and be ready for today and the team showed they were ready today.”
LA GALAXY FORWARD ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC
On making the series his stage, and what he did tonight:
“It was a little heightened before the game I think, during the week, I’m not the best on reading media and that stuff. I approach every game the same. I come with a lot of confidence, a lot of belief, and a lot of responsibility, and when I go out on the field, I feel I have a lot of responsibility to help my teammates and especially to help them win, and today the outcome was perfect. So, another good game.”
On the heat and atmosphere in the building for the game:
“I said it depends on me how the atmosphere would become, and I made it good.”
On the performance of his teammates today:
“I think it was a good game. We conceded the first goal, a penalty I think was offside I heard inside, and for the rest they didn’t really have big chances even when they had possession. We kept going, we had good chances. I scored the first goal, the second half we did two one, three one, and then in the end we conceded a second goal, which we shouldn’t, but we won the game, and that is the most important. I think the team did good, everybody worked well. I felt a little bit tired in the second half, but we won the game, and that is the most important.”
On his second goal being like a Ferrari goal, and how he scored it:
“And the first one was like what? Like an airplane? I mean when the ball comes in the box, I just try to stay focused and attack the ball, because I know I’ll win the headers and I know I’m strong there. Diego did a fantastic cross, because he was looking to do an outside curve but they were blocking him, so he did an external curve instead, and it came perfect, and I won the ball, the header, and it went in. I was pretty sure I would score there because I had a couple of headers like that. Since I came to the MLS, I’ve scored more goals with the head than the feet. I’ve never scored so many goals with my head until I came here. Now I show that I can do that also.”
On the passion in the team today, and if it’s frustrating not being able to replicate it every week:
“I mean it is not every single week we play against LAFC. Today was a different game. Today was about a rival game, two teams from the same city, and obviously we need to get this attitude for every game. Last game before this one was very poor, probably the worst game we did, and today was probably the best game we did. That is what I said in the MLS, every game is like fifty-fifty, you don’t know what the outcome will be. There is no favorites, there is no team that you can predict before the game that they will win. There is a balance that is in the MLS, but today we won and we showed that when we want it, we can do it.”
On if he has ever said something and thought he has to back it up:
“Every day no? Every day, because I have a vision, I have my confidence, and I believe in myself. People call it arrogant, I call it confidence. Ignorant people call it arrogant, intelligent people call it confidence.”
On if he has ever said something and not been quite as confident:
“Since day one, never. Since day one, but not only when I came to MLS, since I started to play football, because I believe so much in myself, and I have a bulletproof mind. When I go out there I know what I am able to do, and I do it good. I do it perfect.”
On if Vela scoring fired him up, and if he thought he had to prove that he is the best player in the MLS:
“Please no, do not offend me. I do not need to prove myself, even if I did not score the goals today. I have a lot of respect Vela, he is a good player, but you did one mistake. You compared him to me. That was your biggest mistake.”
LA GALAXY MIDFIELDER JONATHAN DOS SANTOS
[Translated from Spanish]
On the game and the team’s play:
“We knew it was a very important game. We also knew the mistakes we had made all the previous games, that we struggled in the second half of games and we knew that if we lowered our intensity with this team they were going to kill us. I think the team had a great game despite we started losing with the penalty kick call against us, but I think in the end we did a great job throughout the whole game.”
On coming back and winning the game and the team’s great reaction on the comeback:
“Yes it was in the second minute, so we had a lot of minutes to play. We knew that we had a lot of options if the team played well and pressured well. It’s true the game was very intense. The first half was very intense, it was a back and forth game and the second half was a little more leveled. But like I said, the team did a fantastic effort tonight.”
On saying on camera that ‘LA is Ours’:
“LA is ours, so we have to continue showing this. They haven’t been able to beat us in the four games we’ve played against each other but what I can say is LAFC is a great team. They have been showing it all season, but in the end when they play against us, they have more trouble.”
LA GALAXY DEFENDER JULIAN ARAUJO
On playing a position he hasn’t played in the pros and his assignment tonight:
“I haven’t played the position since probably AYSO, but now playing it my first time in a pro league, and I just went out there and did whatever I could, and I did whatever the coaches asked of me. I just went out there and gave it my all to try and help the team get a victory, and that’s what I did.”
On what the team did to comeback after going down a goal:
“Obviously we didn’t put our heads down, we just kept our heads up and we knew that we had an extra ninety minutes. It was in the first two minutes they scored, and obviously we still had a whole game ahead of us so we were never down on ourselves. We knew we could win the game like we did.”
On what it’s like watching Zlatan out on the field with him:
“It’s crazy. I mean I can’t even explain it to you, watching him on TV as a kid and seeing all the great goals that he scored. And now being a part of it and giving him an assist and he scored a great goal, it’s an unbelievable feeling.”
On the impact on team confidence Zlatan putting himself out there has:
“I mean, I can’t really answer that obviously, but if he says stuff, he is going to do whatever he wants to do. He’s Ibra. He’s going to back his words up and we’re just going to help him out and do whatever we can to make sure he gets that done.”
On what he thought of his first LA Derby:
“It was actually super crazy. The environment, the fans, everybody, the players were all super hyped to be here. As I was walking into the stadium, I knew everybody was on good vibes and everybody wanted to be a part of the win and we all were a part of it. That was our goal coming into the game, we did what we could, and it was a good feeling.”
On if he watched these matches last year:
“Last year I did. I watched one of the games, and it was when Ibra joined and he scored two goals to win it.”
On if he feels like he belongs out there despite being seventeen:
“I mean I can’t play like a kid against these guys. If I do I’m going to get tossed around. I’ve played with people older than me my whole life, and I do whatever I have to do to put my body in there and not be afraid of anything.”
On how playing with Zlatan elevates his style of play:
“Obviously he’s a good player. He demands a lot from us, and it’s always advice. It’s never to put us down, it’s always to help us out and to motivate us. That’s what he does, and I try to learn off of it and just keep going.”
On how tense the match was, and if it met his expectations:
“It was definitely intense. A rivalry game like that, I didn’t expect anything less, and obviously we all went out there and did whatever we could and fought hard. It definitely did.”
On the team playing well, and how the team can build off of it to challenge for the Western Conference:
“Obviously if we continue to play the way we did, and we continue to fight the way we did today I think we can win it all. Just like everybody was saying, I mean the last game against San Jose we didn’t go out the way we did today, and if we did we would have beat them. If we continue to do what we did today, I think we’ll win it all.”
On the team doing everything right as opposed to last week:
“Definitely. We definitely switched our heads around and we did whatever we could today.”
LAFC HEAD COACH BOB BRADLEY
On the loss:
“Overall their intensity took us out of our game. In most ways, we weren’t good in any part of the game. Nowhere near good enough, but the intensity changed the game in that regard, and we didn’t deal well with it, which we expected a derby. No matter what, when you play them you have to deal with a certain number of plays that just go towards you, and then we did terrible with that. We didn’t have enough guys that had really good games, but you know again in the way the game went, their intensity, the physical part of the game, we expected that, because that’s what you get in derbies and that’s where we’ve got to still grow and get better.”
On his post-game conversation with Carlos Vela:
“Look, this is the next step for us as a team, and on a night like that, maybe the football doesn’t come easy at the beginning, but there’s an intensity that matches theirs. We get through stretches where maybe for periods there’s no real great football, but we don’t give anything away, and then little by little we grab a hold of the game and we deal with it, and we start to put it more on our terms, but on the night we weren’t able to do that.”
On Zlatan Ibrahimović’s second goal:
“One of the things that they do is from anywhere on the field, they’re going to put balls towards the back post. I need to see the replay, maybe it’s a play where Tyler [Miller] doesn’t need to be back in the goal. Could a center back get there? I’m not sure. So, certainly as we prepare for the game part of what we say is that he’s definitely cutting back post, he does it every game. The ball sat up there a long time, and at the end of it we failed to put it out of the way.”
On playing against Zlatan Ibrahimović:
“Look he scored three goals tonight, so I’m not getting into the rest. As a team for us, there are times you play against certain teams and there’s a guy that’s a strong personality, and we’ve got to continue find a way to continue to take our football and make it so good and so strong that we don’t, at the end of the day have to deal with all sorts of questions about him, but tonight he comes through. But, there’s a bigger part to it, just in terms of the intensity that they had, and how that, for me, knocked us away too much from things that we try to do all the time.”
LAFC DEFENDER WALKER ZIMMERMAN
On defending against Zlatan Ibrahimović:
“I don’t think we did a good job of handling first balls, and balls that he’s able to bring down. We didn’t do a good job of that, and again, that’s one of his strengths. So surely, we’ll look at how we want to deal with that next time. We eliminated a lot of opportunities, to be honest; I think they probably had four of five shots. Tyler [Miller] had two big saves early, and then after that kind of nothing but the goals. Again, just being a little more aggressive, maybe stepping up a bit sooner, trying to block those shots, but yeah, frustrating match for sure.”
On the intensity of the game:
“I think we’ve just got to be a little braver in certain instances, that’s winning second balls, going in on challenges, stepping up faster, winning our duels. I mean, these are things that we typically do a very good job of, maybe tonight it wasn’t as very sharp as it has been.”
LAFC FORWARD CARLOS VELA
[Translated from Spanish]
On the loss:
“I think it’s the first time we play against Galaxy and I feel that they play better, or that they win the battle in the intensity, or the duels; all of those kinds of things. The rest of the games we played better, but in the end, it was a game as well. Today we didn’t have a good game, and they won a good game.”
On the conversation that he had with Bob Bradley post-game:
“Well we know it was a hard loss against a team of the city, but talked about how we are still in first, and how we have to keep that place. We have to forget this game and continue at our level. We want to be leaders, and we have to keep pushing, keep working, and there’s no other way to be a good team.”
