Sporting Kansas City head coach Raphael Wicky
Thoughts on the second half…
It has nothing to do with the change we did in halftime. We said in halftime that we're going to keep playing. We have to keep playing. We have to keep being brave like what we did in the first half to keep showing up and keep fighting. Obviously, we can not get carried away with emotions. I think the last 5-7 minutes of the first half, we had a few little fights on the field which are unnecessary in that moment in a 3-0 game. We said we have to keep our emotions, we have to keep the mentality and keep playing football. I feel like we stopped playing football for a while. We went straight into their game. We knew it's a very vertical game. They like the duels. We stopped wanting the ball. We stopped trying to make them run and trying to play. When we conceded the first goal, the team just crumbled. That is obviously unacceptable. That is not what we want. That is not what I expected, to be fair, after the last weeks. Now we're sitting here and I cannot believe what happened in the second half.
On what happened to the team in the second half…
If I would exactly know then we would try not to let it happen. In a moment where you are 3-0 up, they put a bit of pressure because they have nothing to lose. They pressure you maybe a bit harder and then maybe don't want the ball anymore. You lose a duel or two and then you lose a little bit of confidence. Then you think let's just boot the ball up front and maybe we're lucky and we get something. But that's exactly what they want. So I think it's a little bit, in certain moments, a confidence thing but also we have to show personality in the difficult moments. A game is not going to go like in first half where you always go (in the right direction). It’s not going to continue like that so we've got to keep showing personality and trying to play together.
On the pressure to get results…
I want to win. I want to win games. I am obviously very disappointed sitting here and losing 4-3 at home after being 3-0 up. That's obviously not good enough to lose 4-0 in the second half and now we have to again analyze what happened in the second half and then we start to prepare a week again.
On the four goals from Philadelphia…
I don't think that Philadelphia did something different in the second half than in the first half. I think we did things different. I think we played less. I think we went too vertical and didn't want the ball anymore. We didn't give solutions anymore like we did in the first half in some very good moments. We knew that if we moved them side to side, on the other side quite often there is space. We did that well in the first half. We stopped doing it. You have to have the mentality for 90 minutes. There is battles for 90 minutes, because that is their game. They play very vertical. They live off second ball and third ball phases and I think, in that spell of 8-10 minutes, we lost ourselves.
On Philadelphia’s first goal…
That's a collective thing, where we're not good. I think the first goal comes where the guy dribbles through three or four players of us where we have moments where we can and have to win challenges. And if you don't win these challenges, then it's becoming dangerous.
Sporting Kansas City midfielder Lasse Berg Johnsen
On the second half…
It's a team collective. We break down. We are a bottom team. We get affected by the first goal. Everybody can see it. We don't get out of that rhythm. They score two quick goals. I should do better on the third goal. I'm afraid to make a penalty. I let him in too soft and it’s 3-3. We are anxious. I would hope to stay here and say that we have been in this situation before where we have been leading 2-0 or 3-0 before and we know how to wave the game out, but we didn't do that today. It's really disappointing. We need to learn from it because it cannot happen. At 3-0 in football, the game should be over. We played a good first half for nothing. It's really a waste and really disappointing. We cannot be sorry for ourselves. It's only we who did it. So I’m sorry to the fans that they have to sit through the second half watching that because that's nowhere near our standard or where we want to be and we know that.
On what changed in the second half…
I'm not sure how much they changed but they definitely did something. My feeling was that they just went straight at us with man-to-man midfielders on our sixes and when we go long they were four against four on the back line. We go a little bit longer. We don't get any clear chances from that. They play with more risk going man-to-man and they feel confident getting one goal, two goals and three goals and we get on the back foot. For sure we could maybe do something else. We could try to press them at times and play more with the ball. We get afraid as a team. It's a situation we are in. We try to play the game and come out with a win and but we struggled when they scored two goals quick.
On the drop in confidence after conceding…
It's happened before, like you say, in Dallas. We've probably scored a lot of goals lately and we have only three points. We know when we score three goals, it should be a win or at least one point. Today, again, we come out with zero points so we are not good at managing those situations at the moment. I think it's a part of the situation we've been in. As a team, we are fighting in the bottom. If you're higher up the table, you have more confidence in those situations. We have to learn from them and try to play better next time we are in the lead because this shouldn't happen.
On the leadership on the field…
We need to talk to each other and look at each other and agree on if we are going to press them for the next minutes or are we going to keep playing or are we going to go longer and go for the second balls. Today, as a team, I didn't think we managed it well enough in those situations. We need to look at it and see how can we solve it better on the pitch because in those moments what usually happens is we players can be silent so we need to talk to each other to make sure we are on the same save wavelength. If we either go longer or if we try to play or if we press them or if we sit, today we didn't manage that good enough.
