Head Coach Adrian Heath
On moving past the tough result over the weekend…
“Well, we have to. There’s no feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve got six huge games coming up, it’s like six cup finals. You look at, not only our fixture list, but everybody else’s, everybody seems to be playing each other right the way through. I said a few weeks ago, it’ll go down to the wire. That result probably gave a lot of teams around us a lot hope at the weekend. It was a prefect opportunity. We would have gone five points clear of the next team below the line. We’ve made it difficult for ourselves but we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and let’s go again. It’s in our own hands. We’re still in the playoff position but we certainly have made it more difficult for ourselves for sure.”
On the mindset of the group heading down the stretch…
“We don’t forget what’s gone on at the weekend but we have to analyze it and see the mistakes that were made and there was plenty in the second half. But no, we have to go again. As I said to them, we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. Was it a disappointment, yea but now we’ve got another big game five days away and we’ve got to produce and play like we know we can. And if we do, we give ourselves a chance.”
On preparing for a team like Austin who has had a difficult season…
“They’ve come in with a bang, you know. Great set up down there. Great stadium. Three DP’s from the half so they’ve gone for it. As you said, they’ve been very, very good at home. Got some big results. Four against the Timbers and things like that. We know it’s not going to be easy for sure but we have go in and see what we can do. We’ll be prepared.”
On getting the international players back…
“Yea, we need everybody available. Obviously at the weekend, we were without four starters or people who’ve played most of the games this season and that’s never ideal. But as long as you keep putting fixtures on international weekends, that’s going to happen more and more as the league gets better and better, and as we try to bring more and more quality into the league. It’s something that we’ve got to get on with. Certainly it’ll be nice to have all the internationals back. Hopefully they all come back fit and healthy and we should have them here by tomorrow evening or Thursday morning.”
Defender Brent Kallman
On moving past the tough result over the weekend…
“Just go back into the work. Focus on the work and each activity, individually getting your body right and getting ready for next weekend and making sure that everybody and as many people are available as possible.”
On playing with a man up in three games but not getting the results…
“I’ll just speak on the one on the weekend. I think we lost discipline, especially going forward. It was like we were in such a hurry to put the game away, to get that next goal that we lost our shape and guys were, maybe, trying to do too much and going forward too much and we left ourselves exposed. And then on the other side, maybe too aggressive going forward and a little too passive in the back. Giving them too much space and too much time and not winning our fifty-fifty balls and our battles after we went up a man.”
On facing Austin who’ve had a tough season but play well at home…
“They have a good understanding…they play a good style where they want to play in between lines and break you down in a very systematic way. I think the shape of the group, being compact and disciplined, not letting them play through us, making them go around us or try to the top is going to be really important.”
Midfielder Wil Trapp
On now being a father of two boys after his wife gave birth to their new son over the weekend…
“It’s hard to kind of put into words at the moment. He’s still so fresh and so new. It’s funny because being a dad of two…being a dad is one thing but having two boys, it’s like woah that’s me. That’s a big step. Family of four. But it’s amazing, we’re very blessed. The boys, exactly. I don’t know if I’ll get used to that too quickly.”
On missing the game against Colorado because of the birth of his son and his thoughts on the game…
“It’s hard to watch games, it really is. Any player can say they just want to be on the field. I was super encouraged by the start of the game. It was great to see Adrien [Hunou] score. Fraga [Franco Fragapane] and Rey [Emanuel Reynoso] were combining well. Ethan [Finlay] was doing a really good job on his side as well. The game, as it went on, got a little frustrating, of course, because you bring a team that never says die back into the game. And for us not capitalizing on the second goal really, really hurt us. So for me, I was screaming in the hospital room but at the same time, I’m happy to be back on the field and training with the guys.”
On how helps the group bounce back as a leader as the season winds down…
“It’s about training. It’s about how we approach every single day, whether it’s getting in on time, doing the gym work, all of those things really, really focus a group in on the task at hand and the goal at hand. If you watched our training just this morning with the guys that didn’t play so much, it was excellent. It’s about everybody now buying into ‘hey, we got six games left but we gotta go one at a time.’ We have to just focus on Austin, give it everything we can in this game and then move on to the next one.”
On facing Austin who’ve had a tough season but play well at home…
“It’s not a trap game in the sense of we have to win it. I don’t think we have any false sense of importance or security in anything at the moment. So really it’s just about us knowing that we have to go and win and that’s not easy to do away from home. Especially against a team that, although they’re low on the table, they can hurt you in a lot of ways.”
On how Austin can hurt Minnesota United…
“They’re a different team than we played earlier in the season. They’ve added a couple key pieces. A new striker as well as a play-making midfielder in [Sebastian] Driussi who is very, very dangerous. As time goes on, teams get more comfortable in what their tactics are and understanding the system and I think you’re seeing that from them a little bit more. Always good in possession. Always move the ball well. And they can score now a little bit better.”