Here's what the team had to say after a tough loss on the road against the New England Revolution.
MINNESOTA UNITED HEAD COACH ADRIAN HEATH
On if he expected to see a motivated Revolution team:
“Yeah, we did. We spoke about it before the game. We showed our group Brad’s [Friedel] interviews from this week and his press comments. So, we knew what was going to come and after we got the equalizer, I thought we’d weather the storm and the pressure that they were going to put on to us and then after that I thought that we were too passive. I don’t think we wanted to go win the game enough. I didn’t think we were going to lose it, I have to be honest, but, I don’t think we did enough to go and try to win the game -- try to take the game to them, try and put them on the back foot enough, and our quality in their half in the second half wasn’t good enough. Too many nearly a good ball, nearly a good pass, nearly a good entry ball, not enough.”
On if there was anything specific that made it hard to create chances in the run of play:
“No, I just don’t think our quality was good enough in their half of the field. Our final ball wasn’t good enough. The ball was either over it or it was on the pass, on the weight, and it was very much, as I said to the players, it was a nearly day. We were nearly good at a lot of things, but unfortunately on the road, nearly doesn’t win you many games. We actually, the first two games of the season, we scored when we needed to and on the road you need to get a goal. I thought the two goals we conceded were very poor from our point of view. I don’t think the Revolution had to work hard enough for either goal and that’s something we’ll need to address. Overall, I didn’t think we were going to lose the game, but I don’t think we did enough to win the game.”
On Darwin Quintero:
“He’s a quality player. In fact today, I thought we got quite a lot of ball in their half of the field and normally the little fella conjures something up. He either makes that really crucial pass or scores a goal himself and I don’t think we had enough quality around him and from him today. You know, by his own standards, his nearly balls – that’s what they were, nearly. He normally comes up with something in a game and that really summed up the afternoon in their half of the field.”
On the road trip to open the season:
“Well, we’ve got another game. You know, we would have settled for six points after three games. Would we have settled for six after four? Probably not, and now we’ve got a big game against the Red Bulls next week, which is never easy, going to Red Bull Arena. We’ll certainly have to probably play better than we did today.”
On how he hopes the team will respond:
“As the record and the history books show, winning on the road in MLS is difficult. A lot of teams don’t win on the road. Hence the fact that there were 12 teams that only won two games last year. We’re in a situation where we go to the Red Bulls next day. It’s five games that we have start. We knew before the season started, it was a difficult start. Now we’ve got one to come, let’s go and give it everything and see if we can pick some points up and if we pick up one or three points next week, I think it will have been a good start.”
MINNESOTA UNITED MIDFIELDER ETHAN FINLAY
On the overall spirit of the team after two road losses in a row:
“Absolutely disappointing. I would say both losses we felt like, coming in, we had an opportunity to get three points and to get zero out of them is a disappointment. We have high expectations this year and that means going on the road and getting results. Obviously, a disappointing result today, but we can’t hang our heads. We don’t have much time with a good team coming up in the New York Red Bulls next weekend that we have to prepare for.”
On the offensive lull and source of struggle in the run of play:
“I would say I thought New England did a really good job at defending forward and we probably didn’t get in behind them as much as we should have and they were able to keep things in front of them. I think the ref let us play today and I would say Angelo [Rodriguez] did well up against their center backs, but they got the better of us today. A great save, obviously, by [Cody] Cropper and a little bit deflating when you feel like you should have one or two. You start to press and maybe you get out of your game a little bit, but there are still positives that we can take out of this game and there were some good moments – we just have to clear up the bad ones.”
On what he personally took from the game:
“Apart from the result, you come into the lineup and want to have results, personally and collectively as a team, so that’s a disappointment. The body feels good and I want to try to work off the foundation that I have. 75 minutes under my belt today and I’ll do what I can to make myself available and make it hard again for the coach to make a selection.”
MINNESOTA UNITED DEFENDER IKE OPARA
On facing a motivated Revolution team:
“Of course we knew that. We knew that they were going to come out and press and do all of the things that they wanted to do, but I actually don’t think it was anything that was crazy or something that caught us off guard. Honestly, I expected more and I think for the most part of that first half we did a really good job of trying to manage the game. We hit some objectives that we wanted to hit and then the start of the second half was when, for some reason, it fell apart. We came into halftime and wanted to make adjustments and I’m not sure what happened. We just defended way too many counters, we lost so many second balls, too many of the first balls, and eventually, you can only defend so many counters before you allow a goal.”
On the Revolution changing their lineup:
“Different faces, but we still expected them to do what they did. Wanting to press forward, run forward, be vertical, trap us under pressure—it didn’t matter who was going to be in there and that’s what we expected. I think their new guys were hungry and motivated, so they really wanted to impress. Maybe they did a good job of it. At the end of the day, it’s us, [more] what we did well then what we didn’t do well.”
On losing two straight games and an upcoming matchup against the Red Bulls:
“Yeah, the season is peaks and valleys. We started off really well—had a little blip in L.A. Today, we had a great opportunity to rectify the situation and I thought we were better in this game. The effort was there, we just weren’t intelligent with how we played from minute one through 90. I think maybe that’s a little bit of trying to gel as a new team—a lot of new faces in our lineup—but, I think we have enough experience to know what, especially these games, call for.”
On gaining momentum ahead of the home opener at Allianz Field:
“I think, defensively, we’ve been okay with defending counters and all of those things, but I think that we need to be a little more difficult in certain areas of the field and not try to sustain so much pressure. Especially on the road, you can only take so much pressure. Even their second goal—terrible shot that turns into a great cross. Those things happen when you’re under pressure a lot of the game, so we’ve got to identify the areas that we need to be better at defending because we get chances. We had a few today and we could have even gone up 2-1 when it was tied 1-1. The opportunities were there, but at the end of the day it was a conscious decision to say ‘if we don’t give up a goal in the second half, we’ll win the game.’ That’s what we believed in and we turned around and gave up a goal. That’s just dedication to being disciplined.”
