Sporting Kansas City head coach Raphael Wicky
On the game…
I think we gave them problems. They are top of the league. They're one of the best teams in the league. We knew that. I was hoping that overall, over 90 minutes plus, we would be a little bit closer to them than what, in the end, we were. We were close for almost half-time, which is not enough. I think the penalty is a hard one, and then, of course, the second goal is two or three minutes into the second half, and that takes a lot of hope away against a very good team who I think we can take a lot from them: what they do, how they do things, in the way of how they fight for every single ball, how they run with each other. I think after that, it was difficult, because 2-0 down against them has been difficult to be dangerous. But in general, yes, we were giving them problems for 40 minutes until the penalty. But again, we have to be honest with ourselves. The moments we had were not clinical enough, not clean enough, not good enough to then take advantage of the moments we create through our hard work, and those are the little details which can change a game.
On what needs to change…
You work hard to win the ball, to press, to force mistakes, and then when you have it, you need to be a bit more calm then when you press, or when you run. You need to be a bit cleaner, have a clear idea of where you want to go, where you want to pass the ball, and at the same time, being 100% convinced in what we do. In the first half, I think we have a 4v3 if we play it right, and those are situations we had in Atlanta last week, where we need a shot on target at least. Those are the moments where we need to make better decisions.
On Jacob Bartlett…
I know what I get from Jacob. Jacob will never let you down. As a player, he gives everything for this club, for the team, and so he has this game. He got a knock on his knee at that moment, and we felt in that moment, let's bring some fresh legs in there. That's why I then subbed him out.
On Andre Luiz…
It's obviously difficult, right? You come into a difficult situation against a very good team. You can see his capacity of accelerating play in a 1v1, but there are too many moments where we then just give him the ball and hope that he's going to dribble three guys and I don't think that can be the expectation because other teams will double him down. There still needs to be support around him, with him, underlapping, overlapping runs, to make it then easier for him, because when he's in positions, I believe he will be very dangerous. You can see his technical quality, his rhythm, his change of pace. Obviously, you could already see a little bit from today. Now we need to give him time.
On the impacts change has…
Of course it always takes time. You then suddenly have a pairing up front who rarely play together, new players coming in, but that's also our job, right? There are certain situations, there are positions in the box which need to be occupied. There has to be a first post run, second post, penalty spot run. Those are independent of who you play with. There are the relationships with the guy around you. That can take time if you don't play every weekend together. Today was a tough game at the end, against a very, very strong team. We gave them problems for a half. After that, it was difficult. They are for a reason up there. We need to try to learn from that as well, see what we can take from them, because they do a lot of things really, really well. It's also frustrating, because in the last games, we were much better. We deserved points. We deserved to win here against St. Louis, and those are the moments where when we are a bit more clean, when we are a bit better, that we will get these points. Tonight it's a difficult match against a very, very good team.
On Moises Mosquera…
Moises is a player who will help this team tremendously with his presence, with his speed, with his hunger to defend. He has his moments where he's really good. Not only against (Thomas) Muller. Muller is a very difficult player to play against, because he's not in one position. He's everywhere. It's unbelievable when you watch him, how he moves, and where he sees the space. It's very difficult to catch for a center defender. Moises is a very, very, very good signing for this club.
Sporting Kansas City midfielder Lasse Berg Johnsen
Thoughts on the match…
I feel it was a back and forth game before they got their first goal. They had one or two hit the post obviously which is dangerous but I also think we stole some balls where, if we are better, we can punish them. So, at that time, I feel it was a game where it was going back and forth. Obviously, it's a really bad situation for us conceding a penalty. They get the momentum and we need to start chasing. After that, even in the second half, they played better than us. They showed they are one of the best teams in the league and we are at the bottom fighting for things. For us now, like it has been for a long time, we know we are in a total rebuild. A lot of players are coming in and a lot of players are going out. We are putting in new things every week. For us, we have to keep fighting on the training pitch to get better because it is a work in progress and right now it's not good enough. We are disappointed to let our fans down, especially at home. It's an ugly result, but we have no chance to lay down and feel sorry for ourselves. We have to work harder than any time in the training pitch because that's where we can improve as a team.
On captaining the team…
It was a proud moment for me to wear the armband, which I really appreciated in front of the fans. Obviously, I’m disappointed with the result but it’s a huge privilege and something I'm proud of. Raphael (Wicky) told me before the game. Zorhan (Bassong) was out. He was captain last week. It's not about me. It's about us. We need to put together better team performances, but we also need to respect the other teams because they are better than us right now. We want to compete higher up the table, but we need to stay humble and work hard every day because it's a work in progress. In a few months or next year, hopefully things will look brighter.
On the departure of players…
I've had the one experience where we lost our captain but then we had older, mature players which filled that role. Right now, it was hard to lose one DP. Now we lost both Manu (Garcia) and Dejan (Joveljic), which as you imagine is a really tough loss for us. You can see Dejan scoring goals wherever he plays. And we have new players coming in. I think everybody can see Andre (Luiz) has something special. He's quick. He's good on the ball, one against one. For sure, he will bring us another dimension and quality to our team, which we will need. But things take time also. We are in a total rebuild, so we have to work hard.
On building chemistry…
That's where we have to train a lot because that's where the relationships come in. Now we have Andre. He needs to know when I have the ball, I want to put him in behind. He needs to know that Taylor (Calheira) wants it into feet or Calvin (Harris) wants it in behind or Shapi (Suleymanov) wants it into feet and this is where it comes with training. I think, for sure, come next January things will look a lot different but until then we cannot feel sorry for ourselves. We have to work as a team and improve before that. We want to win games in this league and that's what we try every game. But of course it's hard to say after every game that we tried our best and we lost because right now we are not good enough and that's why we're bottom of the league.
