Portland Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese
Overall thoughts on the game…
“The only thing I appreciate from tonight is the spirit and effort that I saw from our team. I reserve any additional comment on other obvious factors out of our control that affected the game.”
Portland Timbers midfielder Sebastián Blanco
On his thoughts on the game…
“I’m very calm because the team had a very good attitude, a very good effort to change the history in the second half. I think we deserved more points today, but we played against 14, 15 players.”
On the difference in the second half…
“The first we didn’t play bad. But we created more opportunities. In the second half we took more risks. We played more offensive, moved the ball well and created chances. Again, we had an important mistake and they scored and it was very difficult to come back in the game.”
On the Cristhian Paredes goal…
“I always try to make this play because Jebo [Jeremy Ebobisse] or another player comes behind the center back. So today it’s good for Cristhian that he scored, but we couldn’t score the second goal.”
Portland Timbers defender Zarek Valentin
On his thoughts on the game…
“Obviously it’s a better performance coming from last week. It’s a good to see a reaction from the group. First goal, weird, weird play. A little deflection and then second goal a penalty, that’s tough. For the guys to come back and grab a goal, and if we are going to say there is probably two penalty kick calls again, in my opinion Matt Hollingshead’s arm was in an unnatural position. If I was the defender I would feel like it was PK, but again it’s not my call. Again you move forward and you try to build from this.”
On the difference in the second half…
“I think it’s just a matter of growing in confidence. When this group is confident and we are believing in each other and we have each other’s backs, we are tough to play against. We had [Dallas] under for the majority, obviously they got behind us a few times. Again we have to build on this. It’s not the result we wanted. We can’t control the refs, we just have to control what we can control.”
On handling Michael Barrios…
“Cristhian [Paredes] played great in front of me. Julio [Cascante] always had my back. When you have guys that are covering for you like that it gives you the confidence to be aggressive at times and you just try to do your best whenever possible. I’m happy [with the team’s response], but at the same time I feel like we could have gotten some points here, but onward and upward and hopefully we will give the same performance against Columbus.”
FC Dallas head coach Luchi Gonzalez
Overall thoughts on the game…
“I thought our first half was very positive in terms of creating chances, in terms of pressure, in terms of transitions. The second half it was inconsistent. We were moments of good pressure, moments of good counters and attacks, moments of good possession but then moments of the opposite with casualness, with not being together in a present situation. So as the game progressed, we absorbed. My tactic at the end was, obviously, to absorb and get the result.”
FC Dallas defender Reto Ziegler
On needing to close games…
“I think if you analyze the first half, we had many good chances. I think we need to close the games. We create a lot of goal action that’s really positive, but we have to score two-three goals to break them out mentally. If it doesn’t happen, we have to keep the ball and not just wait and keeping the score. They overloaded us at the end and that’s why we played with five in the back to avoid the crosses. We just adapt to the game. It was not the most beautiful game but we’re really happy with the three points.”
On bouncing back…
“It feels great. We have to continue to play the way we did in the first half, confident on the ball and make many passes. We showed a better side today [than against Philadelphia] and we’re going to continue to play with the ball and with confidence in the future. Today at the end it was only fighting but sometimes we need to do that to get the points.”
FC Dallas forward Jesús Ferreira
On tonight’s goal...
“As the game goes on, they always tell me to act like the ball is going to you. I believed that if I kept thinking like that and just kept running instead of looking where the ball was going, and it came to my feet [and] I just finished it.
Bouncing back at home from Philadelphia and road games…
“Our home is our home and we have to defend it with everything. When teams come here, they have to be scared to play us here at home.”
Notes:
- Goalkeeper Jeff Attinella played his 50th MLS (regular season and playoffs) match for Portland. Attinella became the fourth goalkeeper to hit 50 MLS games played for the Timbers.
- Diego Chara recorded his 18th career assist for Portland. Chara now holds sole possession of ninth place on the club’s all-era assists list.
- Sebastián Blanco delivered his 20th assist as a Timbers player. Blanco is the eighth Timbers player across all eras of the club to reach 20 assists and third in the MLS era, joining Diego Valeri and Darlington Nagbe.
- It was the first assist of the season for both Blanco and Chara.
- Cristhian Paredes scored the second goal of his Timbers career. He is the fourth different player to score a goal for Portland this season.
