Sporting Kansas City Manager Peter Vermes
On gutting out the win…Â
That’s actually a good choice of words. It was one of those games where you had to dig deep. LA was good. They were organized. They found good moments to really press the ball. It was a really difficult game for us. It was one of the more difficult games we’ve had to play. One of the things our guys did tonight was we were stingy as well. I know there was a chance here or there but we had chances here or there as well. That’s what happens in the game but we didn’t lose ourselves. We found a way to not only keep a clean sheet but get that first one and then we actually stayed very committed after the first one. (Andreu) Fontas hit the post on that free kick we flicked to the back post. We stay in the game. We get the goal. To finish them off with the second goal was very mature of us. We dug deep.
On Johnny Russell and Khiry Shelton getting their first goals…
It’s very important. I think it’s also very important mentally for us to be able to go away feeling good about our performance and getting a result. Now we have a break for the guys to get rested both physically and mentally. It’s good for the club. It’s good for our fans. It’s a job well done. We’ve just got to have a good little break and then get ourselves prepared for the next set of games.
On Felipe Hernandez making a major contribution…Â
Felipe put a really good shift in today. I wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to last the entire game. He was a little sick this week. He dug it out and he did the dirty work. Sometimes that’s what the game calls for. He’s always had great timing in the press and he found a good moment today on the first goal. There has been times where that has happened to us trying to play out of the back and we make a mistake here or there. We were fortunate enough to capitalize with Johnny staying with it. Johnny does a lot of that kind of stuff in practice so it was good to see it come out in a game.
On Tim Melia’s performance…Â
Tim was fantastic. Tim was really mature today. I’m not saying he’s not been in the past but today he did so much more for us just in his management of the game and his confidence, his bravery to play out of the back, and he knew when to sit on the ball. He was excellent in all phases of the game. He had some unbelievable distribution. The ball he threw out to Daniel (Salloi) in the first half was great awareness. He was excellent.Â
On the play of Khiry Shelton…
I think the world of Khiry. He’s got an incredible work ethic. He’s the ultimate team guy. I couldn’t be happier for him. He deserves the goal for him because of the amount of work that he puts in within the game and the chances that’s he in and around. I hope that this is the beginning of something for him because what he does for the team. Every time he’s on the field, he helps us get results. He’s a quality guy. I tell him all the time, he’s got a great soccer brain and he’s also got unbelievable physical qualities. He does a great job of marrying those two together. I’m very happy for him. He had a great game.
On the team’s adjustment at halftime…Â
There was a little bit of an adjustment. They were playing a really high line so we wanted to be a little bit more direct in the second half, which I think started to open them up. The other thing too is we also banked on the fact that they were playing at home. They were going to push the game a little bit. We were going to have to see if we could find our opportunities as they’re trying to drive the game which is normal. We were a little bit more direct in the second half at moments and other times we were really good on the ball. I thought in the first half, what we did was we took a little steam out of them as we moved the ball. Don’t get me wrong. They had the ball as well but I think in a lot of games that they play, they wind up having the ball a lot. Today, we had the ball as well and I think it took a little steam out of them in the second half. I still think that we kept our composure in really important moments. It’s not easy when you go away from home and you try to do that in someone else’s house. I thought the guys were good in possession.
On moving into first place…
Obviously it’s always nice to be on the top, not the bottom. That helps immensely. It helps immensely going onto a break with a win. But nothing has been accomplished yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of games ahead of us. We’ve got a lot of guys we’ve got to get back healthy. We’ve got to keep fighting and trying to grind out points because they’re hard to come by in this league.
Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Tim Melia
On the team’s effort…
Today, I think the main thing we did was we showed a lot of resilience. We weren’t playing our game from start to finish. We weren’t as clean on the ball. We weren’t as fast and we weren’t creating as many opportunities. But we fought in every position and we blocked a ton of shots. We found a way to grind out a really important result to put us in a great position going into the break in a really difficult place to play.
On his seven saves…Â
I don’t think we started the game out correctly. But I do think, even though I’m making saves, our players were throwing their bodies around and it was making those shots a little bit more predictable and a lot more difficult for the Galaxy to get clean chances. The amount of times they whipped balls across our six right in front of my face, whether it was Zusi or Ilie or Fontas getting a body on someone and just kind of disrupting them and not allowing them to get clean headers, that happened probably four or five times in the first half. We’re going to have games like this. We’re going to have games where we don’t start the way that we would like to but I think the resilience that we showed tonight is more important. To be able to come out of here with three points is even bigger.
On playing at Dignity Health Sports Park…Â
I played here with Chivas (USA). It was always a place that I didn’t accumulate as many minutes as I wanted to so every time I get the opportunity to play here I enjoy playing here. The weather was great. It’s a game you have to be extra focused in because of how good the Galaxy are. They have quality players all over the field. Going into a break, I think it was really important for us to get a result here tonight. It was something that my main focus coming into this game was we’ve got to make sure we go into this break with a positive mindset. Now we can step away from soccer for a couple days and decompress. When you don’t have a good result and you’re going into a break, it just lingers and you don’t feel as good. Maybe that was the thing that motivated me the most – making sure that we ended this portion of the season on a good note.
Sporting Kansas City captain Johnny Russell
On how it felt to score his first goal of the season and get all three points in LA…Â
Yeah it feels good obviously, it’s been quite a while since I’ve scored and my job is to score goals and create goals so it’s been a bit disappointing on that front but I’m not someone to let it get to me or ruin my confidence so I knew it was only a matter of time before it came. I’m glad it came tonight and obviously Khiry (Shelton) getting one as well. Coming here and getting the three points, the Galaxy are right behind us, right on our heels. It was probably against the run of play a little bit, bit of a smash and grab victory in the end, but it did feel good.”Â
On hanging on in the first half…
It’s always a difficult place to come. They are where they are in the league for a reason. They’re a good team, they were finding great little pockets of space behind our midfield, between them and the back four. They were playing good possession football and it was difficult to get to them at times, probably rode our luck a little bit, they had a few chances in the first half. But that gave us confidence going into the second half, they threw everything they had at us and we managed to withstand it. We knew we were going to get chances in the second half, the game opened up a little bit, they were pushing for the three points and that opened up the other side for us and we’ve a lot of pace in our team so we managed to hit them on the counter for the last one. For my one, it’s just great pressure, we like to press high, we create a lot of chances off that and Felipe (Hernandez) has done so well to win the ball back and I should probably finish it the first time, get the second chance and managed to stick it away. Delighted coming here, team right behind us, so it put a little distance between us, that was what we came here to do. Did we play our best stuff? No, but I don’t care.
On how the team was able to grind out the win after dominating the last few games…
Not every game’s going to be the same, not every team is going to allow us to play our possession game, it’s going to be difficult especially when you come into places like this. It’s an away game, at times we had to ride our luck a little bit. You do appreciate these victories, sometimes these feel even better than games that you dominate. Games that you have to grind out, stick together as a team. Probably not the better team, but at the end of the day, three points to us, we go home happy and that’s it.
On the confidence the team can take from winning the game in this style…
I don’t know so much about confidence, we’re a confident team, we’re playing well, we’re at the top now, we deserve to be here. Confidence is high, that’s why we are where we are, we’re confident in each other, confident in the team, we know exactly what it is that we want to do. You just appreciate some games where you don’t play your best, everyone that watched that would say we weren’t at our best, but we’ve shown that we can come from behind, we’ve shown that we can grind out results now when we aren’t playing well so that’s the signs of a great team and we’re showing that.
