MLS POST-GAME QUOTES
Portland Timbers vs. Orlando City SC
April 12, 2015 – Providence Park (Portland, Ore.)
Final: Timbers 0, Orlando City SC 2
Portland Timbers Quotes
Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter
On how to evaluate his team’s performance…
“I need to look at the tape to have an appropriate perspective. But based on watching the game live and feeling what I felt, it was not a good performance. The first half especially. Orlando had far too much of the ball. That was never the intent. Have to credit them. They came out, played very well in the first half, found the first goal, and you could feel the goal coming. I couldn’t tell my guys after the game that they played well and deserved to win today. I thought Orlando deserved to win the game. That’s tough, as a coach, to say that to your group after the game. This was a head-scratcher a little bit. The first half especially. Thought we obviously played better in the second half and I thought we’d find a goal until [Orlando City’s] scored their second goal. But we didn’t find the goal anyway, so the PK was irrelevant.”
On whether the physicality of the game was an advantage to Orlando City SC…
“No, I don’t think so. We play against physical teams; more physical than Orlando. I thought they played hard. Didn’t think they played dirty, didn’t think they did anything tactically, in terms of fouling, that was evident to me. They came out and they played good football. They kept the ball on us in the first half and, like I said, that wasn’t the plan. So I have to evaluate what went wrong, in that first half especially. Was it the mentality, or was it tactics? Did we get some flat performances? But that’s on me. It’s my responsibility to pick the 11, prepare the group, to come up with a plan, a system. For whatever reason, the plan didn’t get executed in the first half. Sometimes it’s your team. You got it wrong or sometimes it’s the opponent was just better. I think it was probably a little bit of both in that first half. Performances like this happen. Players have off days, teams have off days. I didn’t see it coming; that’s the toughest thing. It was a great week of training. Energy was very good, obviously coming off our first win. We were Confident. Sometimes you can see it a little bit in training, if they’re casual. That wasn’t the case. All week they were sharp and looked hungry before the game. For whatever reason we just lacked energy in that first half. You could feel [Orlando City’s] goal coming. It wasn’t like they pinched a goal against the run. They had the run of play, they had the flow and the rhythm in the first half. Not many teams have come here and done that to us. No excuses. We give Orlando and coach Heath credit and congratulate them. Now it’s my job to look at the game and reflect on it and make sure, more important than anything, this doesn’t happen again. Because we don’t accept it. We don’t accept playing like that in the first half. We don’t accept another team coming in here and bossing the game like they did. But I said it all week, to my team and the media, Orlando is a better team than their record shows. It wasn’t like we took them lightly, but for whatever reason, there just wasn’t that edge, that hunger in the group. Maybe it was just that Orlando was that good on the day.”
On bringing on Jack Jewsbury in the second half…
“It wasn’t so much that George [Fochive] was playing bad, but Jack brings a little more possession and positional sense and an ability to read the game and organize. They were playing very narrow, pulling in their wingers. So we had a numerical disadvantage [in midfield] in that first half, which was partly why they had so much possession, kept the ball so well. We made a couple tactical adjustments, and decided to put Jack in the game because we felt he would be able to organize things a bit better in the middle with his experience and be able to read the game, but also we weren’t keeping the ball as well as we needed to. I thought he brought those things to the game and the insertion of [Dairon] Asprilla as well, kind of brought a little more juice to the game. The second half was much better, we had most of the flow, but couldn’t find the goal. Unfortunately, when they scored the second goal, you could tell our push fell off at the end because of that.”
On how his team will bounce back next week against New York City FC…
“We’ll bounce back like we always do. We’re a team that deals with adversity in a positive way. We’ve got a mentally tough team. We’ve got a good locker room with guys that have character. We’ll get back to work and have a really hard week of training. I’m going to reflect on the game and reflect on what went wrong. Like I said, it’s my responsibility. We weren’t good enough today. That’s me, the guys, everybody.”
Portland Timbers defender Liam Ridgewell
On how easy or difficult it is to move past a result like today…
“Today it’s very difficult, I can tell you that much. We’ve got to get it out of our minds very quickly. We’ve had a few this season so far already. The Galaxy one, I think of that and we’ve pushed it to the back of our mind and bounced back. That’s what we’ve got to do for next week. There’s no one hanging about here. During the week, we’ll push this aside. Hopefully it’s a little bit of a reminder that it’s not so easy and we need to knuckle down every game.”
On what the team needs to do to get more wins at home…
“Keeping clean sheets and scoring goals. It’s not rocket science. We’re working on it and we want to make sure we can do that. Like I said, today’s a tough one to take, but Orlando played very well and we’ve got to take a little note from them on how well they played and try to take that and play that good away from home as well.”
On his leadership to help the team…
“We’re going to have ups and downs. The whole season isn’t going to be great. We’re not going to it every single week. But we’ve got to learn to grind out results, especially at home. We want to pick up maximum points at home as best we can. Just have to learn from these things and hopefully it’s a bit of a kick up the butt and lets us know where we are. Hopefully we can kick on and try to make sure this never happens again.”
Portland Timbers midfielder Jack Jewsbury
General reaction to the game…
“Obviously disappointed. Anytime we’re at home, we expect a better performance and expect to have an opportunity to get three points. Felt like we had a really slow start to the game and kudos to them for playing well and coming at us, especially here in our place. But the response wasn’t good enough from us and now we have, I think six of our next eight are on the road, so now we have to go do some work on the road.”
On how the team will put this game behind them…
“As a veteran guy and a leader within the locker room, you have to make sure to keep your highs low and your lows high. There are going to be ups and downs throughout the season. Obviously this is a low. This isn’t something we expected. Coming off the win last week, we felt pretty confident and we were excited to get back here and getting three points. Some things don’t go the way we planned them and now it’s about the way we react as a team.”
On how the Timbers could have worked on breaking down the Orlando organization better…
“They’re a very good team, especially for an expansion team. They obviously have some quality players on their squad. They came in here and played well. For us, in the middle of midfield they were very narrow with their guys and used their outside backs to get width. So we have to do a better job of tactically being aware of that and maybe change the way we played that first half. That’s maybe where we struggled a little bit, in terms of keeping the ball and getting a hold of it. We defended for long periods, so therefore looked a little tired when we looked to spring on the offensive side of things.”
Orlando City SC Quotes
Orlando City head coach Adrian Heath
On getting a big win on the road…
“On the road three points is always really valuable. I thought certainly first half we were well worthy of it. I think overall I’m a firm believer that you get out football what you put in. These guys have put so much in over the last few weeks with not a lot of reward. I thought today they had a little bit of a payback for maybe DC United or Vancouver.”
On his decision to use three defensive midfielders…
“We thought that the way that the play, [Darlington] Nagbe comes in off the line very early and nearly plays off the striker. We just wanted to make sure that Amobi [Okugo] was in his area if he did. I thought he worked really well. We managed to get the ball to Brek [Shea] and Ricky out there, which we had been working on all week. I thought there was a little bit more space out there and if we can get two good players out there with time and space, you can create and that’s what we did in the first half.”
On if Donovan Ricketts prepared the team for the atmosphere in Portland…
“We’ve been here a few times we knew what it’s like. It’s a terrific place to come and play football. As I said to players before the game, all those years ago when you were all little kids growing up this is what you do. This is the environments you want to come and play in. Fantastic crowd and I’m just so pleased for our players.”
On whether the team needed this type of a result after two home losses…
“You do because if you lose this one everyone starts telling you that you haven’t won in four, you haven’t won in three or whatever, so that will keep all you lot quiet for another weekend and we will go and get ourselves prepared for next week in Columbus.”
Orlando City goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts
On if he said anything to his teammates to prepare them for the atmosphere at Providence Park…
“I think we are all professionals and we’ve played in environments like this before. I just told them it was going to be one of the best atmospheres to play football in the league and everybody gets up for that kind atmosphere.”
On what it was like to play in Portland as the opponent…
“It’s kind of different, but it’s good coming away with the win.”
On what it felt like when he came out onto the field for warm ups and the reaction he received…
“It felt good. I had two good years here in Portland, so the welcome was well appreciated. I didn’t leave on bad terms, so I was expecting both, but I wasn’t expecting that either.”
Orlando City forward Kaká
On how big this win was for the confidence of the club…
“It was an amazing game. It was necessary; we needed a win like this after our last game. So it’s unbelievable. Congratulations to our team. It’s very tough to win here. Nice team, nice atmosphere, nice supporters. So congratulations to Portland and congratulations to Orlando.”
On what the atmosphere was like at Providence Park…
“It was amazing, the atmosphere, the supporters and every time they sing and I think it’s very tough to play here. So it makes our win better and great because it’s not easy to play here.”
On what happened on his penalty kick sequence…
“I just didn’t know, when I looked to the referee he said it was going to repeat. I don’t know why, probably it’s for encroachment, but I haven’t seen the image, so I think it’s for encroachment. I just kicked it and the goalkeeper chose the side and he was lucky and I was unlucky. So the second one I was lucky and he was unlucky.”
On what it means to score a goal in a place like Portland in tough environment…
“It’s great. To score a goal is always a big thing. To score another, this is my third goal in the league. And here the team won, everything’s good, so today was a great day for Orlando. It was little bit of pressure to kick on that side [facing the Timbers Army], but when you see the crowd and the atmosphere I had more motivation for score.”
On the performance of the defense today…
“We are playing very good. Today we played good another time. We can win on the road. This a big thing. We didn’t concede any goals. Now we have this big thing: we want to win at home.”
Notes:
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Sunday’s crowd of 21,144 was the team’s 72nd consecutive home sellout at Providence Park since 2011. Portland has sold out all of its regular-season home games since joining MLS.
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Midfielder Darlington Nagbe made the 133rd appearance of his Timbers MLS career on Sunday, moving out of a tie with USL Timbers midfielder Hugo Alcaraz-Cuellar and into sole possession of fifth place on the Timbers all-time appearances list across all eras.
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With a shot on goal against Orlando City, Nagbe moved into first place in the Timbers MLS record book for career shots on goal (69).
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Defender Liam Ridgewell made his 21st consecutive start since joining Portland on June 25, 2014, the longest current streak for the Timbers.
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Sunday’s loss snapped the club's seven-match home unbeaten streak and marks Portland's first loss at home since Aug. 24, 2014.
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Portland attempted 515 passes against Orlando City which marks the second time in the last three games that the Timbers have registered more than 500 passes (531 pass attempts at Vancouver on March 28).
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Portland’s 84-percent passing accuracy on Sunday was the second-highest of the season for the Timbers and fourth-highest in the league so far this season. Portland holds two of the top five single-game passing accuracy marks in MLS in 2015.
- Suffering 16 fouls on Sunday, the Timbers are the most-fouled team in MLS so far this season (98 fouls suffered).
