Postgame Quote Sheet
LA Galaxy 2, New England Revolution 2
Sunday, May 31, 2015 – 4:00 p.m. PT
MLS Regular Season
Gillette Stadium – Foxborough, Mass.
LA GALAXY HEAD COACH BRUCE ARENA
On getting a point on the road:
“Well it’s a good point on the road. This game tonight was hectic, crazy, out of control, not an easy game. I give our guys credit. Going down a goal in the early minutes and being able to get a point out of it against a good team, it’s a good result, a good week for us with two wins and a draw.”
On the recent stretch of road games:
“It’s been a difficult month for sure and I don’t think it’s getting any easier, so I think it’s been a good experience for us.”
On midfielder Ignacio Maganto scoring his first career goal:
“Good young player, took his goal well, I think he’s pretty consistent for 90 minutes and I’m real pleased to see that.”
On the injuries his team suffered during the game:
“These are difficult conditions for players to play in. We’ve gotten a lot on injuries on turf this year and I think if your body is not conditioned for it, it’s difficult and we’ve suffered a lot of injuries on the artificial fields.”
On defender Oscar Sorto battling back after a bad play:
“A very poor opening 15 minutes for Oscar (Sorto) and then I thought he played well in the second half. He wants to become a real player in this league, on our team. He’s got to start games, better have more confidence and that’s obviously partly due to not having enough experience, but he’s going to get his chances this year and he’s got to grow each and every game.”
On Gyasi Zardes’ goal:
“Gyasi needed the goal. He worked real hard tonight, technically at times could’ve been a little better, but he was a bit of a handful for 90 minutes.”
On playing defensively to preserve the draw:
“Well its 2-2, you know we got a point so. We’ve been in that situation a couple of time this year and fell short and so we got the point on the road, that’s important.”
LA GALAXY FORWARD GYASI ZARDES
On how badly he wanted to score his goal:
“Very bad. When you’re playing up top and when you have opportunities, you just want just execute those opportunities.”
On Jose Villarreal’s assist on the goal:
“Jose (Villarreal) is a phenomenal player. He’s so classy and cheeky. Just to play a through ball like that is nice.”
On his relationship with Jose Villarreal:
“We just get each other, we work for each other. If I see Jose working hard, that motivates me, like man, I want to be on the same page as him, so we try to be on the same page together, and are link of play, we just try to find each other.”
On struggling over the past few games:
“I just haven’t been scoring but as a team player, I think I have been productive. It’s nice to get a goal but at the same time, the ultimate goal is my team getting points and winning.”
On a difficult month filled with road games:
“It’s wonderful to end it with a point. Now that we are going to have more home games, it’s going to be great for us.”
On being called into the U.S. National Team:
“I feel blessed and thankful to getting called up to the National Team again. I’m just going to give my all when I’m there in camp so I just keep getting called in for the future.”
On how scoring a goal tonight will boost his confidence:
“I wouldn’t say swagger and stuff, but just getting a goal is nice first of all. Scoring goals is tough in the league, and when you do goal, it feels great. Just going into camp with this work rate, I just want to keep it going and keep working hard.”
On being called in to the U.S. National Team before the CONCACAF Gold Cup:
“Of course, that is a huge Cup coming up. You want to be on the roster. Any American player, professional player wants to be called to that roster, so I just keep working hard to get my invite.”
On possibly playing against national teams from Germany and Netherlands:
“It is going to be an amazing experience. Germany, they won the World Cup, phenomenal players, not only that Holland is phenomenal team as well, so these players, are great players and just to be on the same field as them and compete against them, is going to be a wonderful experience for myself.”
LA GALAXY MIDFIELDER IGNACIO MAGANTO
On scoring his first career goal:
“Not going to lie, feels good to get my first goal. Last game, I could have scored. Today, I got it in the first half and it wasn’t enough to get the three points, but it was a good point for a team on the road.”
On his assist on Gyasi Zardes’ goal:
“Yeah, I wanted to switch the ball, but I didn’t hit long enough and it went to Villarreal, but a nice touch, and a nice assist to Gyasi.”
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION HEAD COACH JAY HEAPS
On the result:
“It was a 2-2 game. Came out really well, and then obviously we let them back in and I liked our fight. I thought our urgency was – should have been better in the second half and we created a lot of chances but I thought that the referee wasn’t letting us play the game. It really felt like there was a lot of delays in the game and unfortunately our tempo needs to be played quickly.”
On what happened after New England’s first goal:
“We came out really well and started the game well and obviously I thought we should have had two and unfortunately we didn’t take care of business and we put ourselves in a tough spot.”
On Diego Fagundez earning the start:
“Diego (Fagundez) is a very good player and we thought we would slide him in there and get a good start for us.”
On Fagundez taking set pieces:
“Yeah, Diego does those in practice quite a bit. This week he’d been really good on set pieces and, you know, I think that was something that we were looking forward to when he took it out. I think a lot of guys thought he was going to make it.”
On what he thinks need to happen to get three points moving forward:
“I thought we started the game really well and we didn’t finish the half the way we should have and again we’ve got to be better, more urgent at home to get all three points.”
On how he felt Diego Fagundez’s goal tonight would affect his confidence:
“I do think Diego rides the wave and unfortunately rides the ups and the downs and we’re trying to get him to be a little bit more consistent so I hope that it takes him in the right direction and keeps him fighting for more minutes and fighting for more starts.”
On midfielder Daigo Kobayashi’s performance as a substitute:
“I thought it was really, I thought he, you know, limited minutes – it was a tough one because we didn’t want to – we made a like-for-like change I thought with Daigo (Kobayashi) coming in. He brings obviously something a little bit different than Diego (Fagundez) but you know I think we could have brought him in for a couple different players, but you saw the way the game was going. Every set piece was something that they were going to throw a lot of guys forward to and we felt like that was – if we were going to get scored on, it was going to be a set piece-type scenario and so we didn’t want to bring one of the bigger guys off. So we went like-for-like and brought Daigo in but we probably could have, you know, on a different night we may have brought him in a little sooner.”
On the result:
“I’m disappointed as you can tell because I thought our game plan was really good and we came out an executed for the first 12 minutes of that game and if we continued to do that for another 30 or 40 minutes you’d see a big smile on my face right now. But we didn’t and that’s why I’m so frustrated right now is that when we train all week and we start the game the right way and go about the game the right way and then we get our goal and we turn off and we don’t continue to do what we’ve done well all week, it’s very frustrating.”
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION WINGER TEAL BUNBURY
On if he was frustrated settling for a point:
“A little bit, I mean you always want to get three points, you always want to win games, especially at home, and especially after a few results that we’ve had have been ties or losses. We got a point out of it so I guess we can be a little bit happy about that, that we didn’t lose the game. But I thought the guys once again, there was just a little 10 minute period where we let the game get away, but besides that I was pleased with everybody’s performance. We got to look back at the tape and maybe figure out some things that we could do better and I think we just have to have a killer instinct and be able to put teams away. After we score the first one we got to keep going and bury our other chances and not letting teams think that they can stay in the game.”
On his goal:
“We talked all week about trying to make sure we had those killer instinct runs. The balls were being played in previous games and maybe the runs weren’t there so I wanted to make sure I was making a run. Juan (Agudelo) played an unbelievable ball to Scotty (Caldwell), took the ball down the line, he played a great ball across and my job there is to put the ball in the back of the net.”
On how the team can stop the opposition from dominating periods of the game:
“I think it’s just a little more focus and mentality. It’s not that we were playing poorly. I think that we maybe just weren’t as tough as we should have been. We let LA get on the ball a little too easily so it’s a good thing that it’s those little things that we can definitely shore up and it’s not a huge tactical thing that we need to try to rejuvenate or anything like that so I’m glad that it’s just something where we just need to be more mentally aware.”
On the team’s upcoming trip to face the Portland Timbers:
“Portland’s a great team and they have unbelievable fans there and it’s always a fun time being able to play there so this week we’ve got to prepare for them. They just came off a good result and we know that they’re going to be buzzing and going to be ready for this matchup so we got to get mentally prepared this week and make sure we’re ready for a battle.”
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION MIDFIELDER DIEGO FAGUNDEZ
On how it felt to be back in the starting lineup:
“It feels great. I think everyone wants to do that. For me, it was just trying to fill in Lee’s (Nguyen) spot for a little and I just gave it all I had in the middle and got a goal off of it.”
On his comfort level in the middle of the pitch:
“I’ve always played there so I feel very comfortable. It’s one of those positions where I can play all three of them but wherever Jay (Heaps) needs me, I’ll be playing there.”
On how it felt to get his first goal of the season:
“It feels great. It feels like something came off my back a little bit. I’ve been looking for it for a while, and it hadn’t happened but I got my chance with a free kick and I’ve been practicing it all week and I got it.”
On the last time he hit a free kick in a game:
“It’s been a while, probably in the (Revolution) Academy. It has been awhile, but I guess if you keep practicing it in practices you can definitely hit them in the games.”
On if he sensed an opportunity to lift the team up after Jermaine Jones’ injury:
“It wasn’t just that, I think we were down and we were trying to get another goal before the half and once I had that chance, I said that I need to get this in to help out the team and that’s when you need to have players step up and that’s what I had to do was step up.”
On how many times he hit the free kick in practice:
“Yesterday I probably hit it maybe 30 times right from that spot and then today right before warm-ups I hit one and I stopped with that one and I got one in the game so it was perfect.”
On what he thinks it’s going to take for the team to turn draws into wins:
“We just have to finish out games. I think these last couple of games we keep scoring first and then we let the other team come back and score and it’s just been tough games.”
On not being able to break down the Galaxy in the second half:
“We couldn’t get that goal and I think it was tough for us. We couldn’t really break them down and we couldn’t really have our chances but when we have chances we just have to finish them and then on those rebounds we just have to be there. We knew the field was going to be wet and it was going to be fast so we just have to be better up top.”
