Quotes: Portland Timbers vs. San Jose Earthquakes
Portland Timbers Quotes
Timbers head coach John Spencer
On getting players ready after loss to Colorado:
“I think it’s easy to get up for games here. The passion and energy that’s in the stadium is just tremendous. I thought from the first whistle, we asked them to start well, and they certainly did that. I thought some of the football in the first half was probably the best that we’ve played in a long time.”
On beating a red-hot team in San Jose:
“Probably the hottest team in the country right now; the best second-half team in the league, bar-none. I thought we thoroughly deserved the three points tonight. I think this says a lot for the guys. It’s not going to be coaching. It’s nothing to do with me and the staff, I said that to them before the game. These are the types of games where you’ve got to go and produce. I take my hat off to every single player that stepped on to the field tonight. I thought they were magnificent. I thought when we’re under pressure, guys that don’t usually defend as hard defended with everything they had. Showed a lot of character, a lot of guts, and a tremendous, tremendous win. Probably one of the most satisfying wins we’ve had here as a coaching staff.”
On the play of the team’s defense:
“I spoke to you a couple weeks ago, the Seattle game, I think it was a similar type performance again tonight. But we’ve got to be more consistent with that. We can’t just do it at home. A special group of guys. They keep believing in each other as much as we believe in them. You’ve got to work that way home and away. There’s no easy games. You can make the games easier by out-working the opponents, and we made it a little bit easier on ourselves tonight going 2-0 up.”
On Danny Mwanga scoring his first goal with the Timbers:
“I thought it was tremendous break; great counter-attack. I said to Mwanga, you’ve got to have that ruthlessness in your makeup, not be looking to set someone else up. When you get into the box, when you get into the danger zone, you’ve got to become a different animal, so to see him coming across, movement was excellent, and a great, great finish. How could you not want to celebrate in front of the Timbers Army?”
Timbers defender Jack Jewsbury:
On how satisfying the win was:
“It’s good. A lot of people had questions for us after the poor performance in Colorado. We wanted to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we had the fight in us tonight, because we knew against them that it was going to be a battle. It wasn’t going to be the prettiest game in the world. We fought from minute one and deserved the result.”
On getting a lift from the win:
“I hope so. We’ve proved we can do it here, and now it’s time to go on the road and prove to everyone, because I know Thursday, Friday, you guys are going to come with the questions to me about what we need to do on the road. We’ve got to take that confidence from this group, because there’s some unbelievable things we’re doing when we’re at home, and now we’ve got to translate that into three points on the road as well.”
On building confidence:
“We’ve got confidence, but the reality is it is one game. It’s time for us to start putting two and three performances together to really get us going up in the standings and in that playoff race. It feels good tonight, and tomorrow it will be nice to think back on it, but then we got to start thinking about Salt Lake on the weekend, and it’s going to be another tough match.”
Timbers forward Danny Mwanga
On scoring in the win:
“It’s a big relief. It’s my first goal of the season, and first one for the Portland Timbers, so it’s huge. It feels good to do it, and hopefully I’m going to keep that feeling going to the next game against Salt Lake.”
On feeling pressure after the Colorado loss:
“Not necessarily. I think everybody has a bad game sometimes. We just came back, we looked at the game, and we looked at the things that we didn’t do so good, and then we wanted to come in tonight and correct that, and I think we did that. But at the same time, I feel like we still have a lot of work to do to trying to keep getting better and better.”
On how it felt to score in front of the home crowd:
“It’s one of the best feelings ever. Seeing all those fans, getting up and down, and chanting - it feels great. Hopefully I’m going to build from that, and score more goals for the rest of the season.”
Timbers midfielder Franck Songo'o
On being motivated after the previous loss:
“I wasn’t happy coming out, with the two goals coming from my side. I wanted to prove to my teammates that I could do better. I came out, everyone did, we played as a great team today, but we we’re lucky to get the three points.”
On whether the win was the most satisfying of the season:
“No, not yet. We got to keep working. We want to get to the playoffs, we got the quality for that. It’s a little step. We got to enjoy today, but start working from tomorrow, because there’s a big game on Saturday.”
San Jose Earthquakes Quotes
Earthquakes head coach Frank Yallop
Overall Thoughts:
“Obviously, disappointing to lose. If we could of kept it to one, we could have kept within the match, but the second goal killed us. We got our goal back and had a few anxious moments that I thought we could have scored on, but you really can’t keep trying to come back from a few goals down. Tonight wasn’t our night, but I though Portland in the end, especially in the first half played well. I don’t think we really ever got the hang of the pitch, but when we did I thought we played well.”
Thoughts on Portland’s second goal:
“I wouldn’t call it a mistake, but David’s got make it known that the referee doesn’t have to make a decision. He’s got to come out and take it, punch it or kick it. As a goalkeeper you got to do that, and he knows that. Obviously the second goal doesn’t fall on anyone, and he has to learn from that and learn the lesson of not putting the decision into the referees hand, you have to put it into your own.”
On whether or not there was a hangover effect from the games last week:
“Probably, we didn’t really talk about it. Portland did press us well and as I said before we didn’t get to grips with the field. This place isn’t easy to play on because it’s pretty quick and slick. Overall the game wasn’t really there in the first half, we gave a lot of balls away, which is not like us and we didn’t create a lot of chances for us, which is also not like us. No, I don’t think so, I guess you can say it was, but I don’t want to say it’s the reason we didn’t play well. We really finished the game well and I thought there was going to be only one team to score at the end and it wasn’t us.”
Thoughts on Danny Mwanga’s first goal:
“I think he’s a good player. He’s one of the players who can hurt you if you give him the chance. We should of done better on their goal, such as foul or disrupt it in any way we can. We will talk about it, we always win and lose together. We talked about our team spirit and how to get ready for the weekend.”
Earthquakes forward Alan Gordon
Thoughts on the match:
“It was a bit difficult for us to get used to the turf with the way it plays. Bottom line Portland played well and it took us a half to get into the game. I think we got unlucky on the second goal. There are some positives to take out of it, without that second goal we could had stayed in it like we always have. I don’t think we’re going to hang our heads on this one, we’re going to look to the next game and get the win.”
Thoughts on his goal:
“I think it was more of a reaction, the ball came shooting through and I got my foot on it. It was good to get the goal, I thought we were going to get the second one like we have been all season. You have to give credit to them and the crowd was amazing and behind them all the way, with that they earned their three points today.”
On the team’s recent stretch of games:
“We are a good team with a great attitude. We take one game at a time and I feel that this team has something special. You know a lot of teams would hang their head after a loss like this. We just keep our heads looking forward and continue to push.”
Earthquakes midfielder Shea Salinas
Overall thoughts on first start since April 14:
“It was nice to be out there, and it’s always disappointing when you get a loss.”
Thoughts on the effort against Portland:
“We just wanted to bring in the hard work we have always been bringing to every game. We wanted the three points, and well they didn’t come to us. We started out slow and they jumped on us the first half and we just couldn’t keep the ball in our grips which put us in a hole.”
On what the team will take from the match:
“We can’t take anything for granted. We have a big target on our back and every team wants to stop us. So with this we have to go to Dallas and fight for the three points we lost tonight.”
Notes:
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The Timbers played in their 50th league match as an MLS club on Tuesday against San Jose.
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Portland is unbeaten in their last six home MLS matches, posting a 4-0-2 record in that span. The club’s current streak ties its MLS record for longest home unbeaten streaks set from July 30-Sept. 21, 2011.
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Tuesday was the first of three regular-season matchups between Portland and San Jose in 2012. With the win, the Timbers improve to 1-0-2 in the all-time MLS series against the Earthquakes.
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Making his first start at JELD-WEN Field and his second overall with the Timbers, forward Danny Mwanga scored his first goal of the season Tuesday against San Jose. It was his first MLS tally since June 25, 2011, as a member of the Philadelphia Union against Chivas USA.
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On Mwanga’s goal in the first half, the Timbers have scored the opening goal in each of their last four MLS home matches.
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When scoring the first goal of a match at JELD-WEN Field, the Timbers have an overall record of 13-2-3 as an MLS club.
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Of the Timbers’ 14 goals scored at JELD-WEN Field in league play, 12 have been deposited into the North goal in front of the Timbers’ Army.
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The Timbers’ 19 goals against San Jose set a new MLS club record for shots in a single game. The previous high was 17 shots set against Philadelphia in the 2012 MLS season opener on March 12.
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Starting for San Jose was forward Alan Gordon, who had a standout rookie season with the second-division Timbers in 2004. He scored 17 goals during his rookie campaign, earning A-League Rookie of the Year honors. Following the season, Gordon was signed by the LA Galaxy and made the move to MLS.
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Goalkeeper Troy Perkins made his 45th consecutive MLS start for the Timbers, dating back to April 23, 2011.
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Midfielder Eric Alexander made his eighth start of the season Tuesday, returning to the Starting XI for the first time since May 26 against Vancouver Whitecaps FC.
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Timbers midfielder Lovel Palmer featured against San Jose, making his first start since May 20 against Chicago.
- Midfielder Franck Songo’o has logged an assist in each of the last two home matches – vs. Seattle Sounders FC on July 24 and vs. San Jose on July 3.
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With three shots against the Earthquakes, forward Kris Boyd match the Timbers’ MLS club record with at least one shot in 16 consecutive matches. The mark was first set by forward Kenny Cooper during the 2011 season.
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Midfielder Diego Chara was unavailable Tuesday due to a one-game, league-imposed suspension for yellow card accumulation. He missed just his second MLS match since making his Timbers debut on April 23, 2011, both have been the result of a card accumulation suspension; the other was Aug. 6, 2011. With his suspension, Chara’s streak of 27 consecutive starts came to an end.
- Tuesday’s match marked the third and final match of a three-match suspension for Portland defender Hanyer Mosquera for an incident against the LA Galaxy on June 17.
