A lot goes down on the pitch in any given match. Each week, we’ll be talking to one player about one specific play from last week’s match and letting them give an inside view of the play as it developed.
This week, we talked with Christian Ramirez about his header against Seattle, a goal that snapped a scoreless stretch for him and showed off his growing chemistry with Darwin Quintero.

Christian Ramirez: Once Sam [Nicholson] takes his first touch in, I make eye contact with him to float it into that space in between the six and the penalty spot. Because the back line was taking steps forward, and I was trying to time it so I could break that line, as he struck the ball. But I didn’t know that Darwin was behind me, and that’s who Sam was really aiming for.

So Sam hit Darwin, and once I saw it going over my head, I knew I had to immediately recycle and get myself to the middle of the goal. Either Darwin is going to shoot it, and I’m there for a rebound or he’s going to settle it and find me on that back post.

Something that Adrian [Heath] always says is: 90 something percent of goals are scored inside the six-yard box. So I try to get myself in there as much as I can. In between the goal frame is where you’re going to score most of your goals, and I lost [Román] Torres and I lost Chad Marshall in there.

And Miguel sets a decent pick on [Kelvin] Leerdam, so that frees me up a little bit. <laughs> He’s a pest in there. With his movement, he gets on the end of a lot of little things. And for him to just be in here with me, [he] attracts the attention of another defender, so it frees me up. It gives me about two yards of freedom that I make them pay for.