PORTLAND, Ore. -- LA Galaxy head coach Sigi Schmid spoke after the Galaxy's 3-1 defeat to the Portland Timbers.
Schmid's thoughts are below:
General thoughts on the match…
“Obviously we’re disappointed and I think Portland was the better team in the first half. Superior to us at the time, but goals change games. The goal that gets disallowed [after video review], I mean it was the correct reasoning, but it’s a goal that we should have just headed in. Then the chance that Jack McInerney missed. If one of those stands, it changes the whole complexion of the game. Thought we did good coming back right away after we took that first goal, but overall our play wasn’t good enough. In the second half I thought we were better, but [Portland] took their foot off the pedal.”
On his team’s reaction after the VAR review…
“I tried to call some players over and tell them if the call is going against us to keep our heads up. But that’s something we need to keep working on as well.”
General thoughts on VAR…
“I think video replay is fine. It’s important to get the calls correct and it certainly got the call correct.”
On Jonathan dos Santos’ debut coming off the bench…
“It was good. Jonathan is a good player, but he hasn’t played a game since July 2 and hasn’t really trained on a regular basis. We don’t want to overplay him at this stage and all of a sudden there’s an injury and he’s out for a long time. But I thought he did well when he came in.”
On missing Jelle Van Damme…
“Obviously Van Damme’s a good player and he helps us. We also missed [Romain] Alessandrini, but that meant there was an opportunity for [Dave] Romney to step in and do the job. It meant there was an opportunity as well for Jack McInerney. They’re all pros so when their number gets called they need to step up and perform.”
On moving forward from this loss…
“We can’t worry. We can’t get caught up in points. We need to get caught up in playing better soccer. Right now we’re just not playing good soccer. We need to compete more at the right opportunities. We gave away too many soft balls. Everytime we put together four, five, six, seven pass combinations, then someone wasn’t as alert as they needed to be and all of a sudden the ball turned over. We had to do a lot of defending in the first half, not because Portland… I meant, Portland was good offensively, don’t get me wrong. But we didn’t hold the ball enough so we never forced them. I mean it’s great when a team never forces you into a defensive shape. Then you’re always in a good offensive shape. That’s something we need to get better.
