Swope Park Rangers Head Coach Paulo Nagamura
Thoughts on the match:
“Well let’s start with the first five minutes of the game. If you give up two goals like that, two silly mistakes, I can’t remember the second goal, I’ll have to see it on video, but definitely the first one. If you put yourself down five minutes into the game against a good team, it’s really difficult to turn that around. I thought after the first 10 minutes, we started playing, we started being more aggressive defensively, smart with the ball, playing one-two touches, and we were able to create a lot of good moments around their goal. We score a good goal with Wilson (Harris), and we were back in the game but again, in the second half, we knew that they were going to let us have a little bit of the ball and they were going to look to counter and that’s what they did with the third goal. They counter, maybe we could clear the ball a little better on the top of the box there and they scored the third. It’s an uphill battle, like I said, against a good team that has a lot of experience, a lot of guys with MLS experience. But overall, if you take those mistakes that cost us goals, I think it was a good match. It was difficult in the second half that they were getting in a low block and defending well which made it more difficult for us, but there were good signs, there were mistakes that cost us goals, and that’s what happens when you play against good teams.”
On lack of consistency in the lineup:
“You can say that. Not having the same guys week-in, week-out, yeah you can say that, but the things that we did in the game today, you don’t need to train the entire week to make the mistakes that we did. Easy clearance, ball back to the goalkeeper, little mistakes that are basics in soccer that cost us a goal.”
On Gideon Zelalem’s performance:
“I think Gedi was good, I think Gedi was active, he was getting on the ball, he was connecting passes, he was in good spots defensively. Of course he’s still building his fitness, I’m glad that he was able to go full 90 today, I think it was a good step for him and hopefully it can help him with the first team.”
Swope Park Rangers defender Graham Smith
On rebounding after the difficult start:
“Anytime you start the first five minutes like we started today, you’re giving yourself a hole that you need to climb out of. Basically just making the game harder on ourselves. Once that happens, you have to put it behind you, it’s something to address after the game but in the moment you’ve got to put it behind you and keep moving forward. I thought the boys did a good job of rallying, the second 40 minutes of that first half we were dominating the game. It’s just frustrating because if we can put that together for 90 minutes, especially against a good team like Indy Eleven, we can get a result. But, now we’re where we are now.”
On inconsistency during games:
“Yeah it’s consistency, it’s mentality, it’s something that we need to look internally to try and figure out what’s wrong and try to fix it because nobody likes this feeling.”
Swope Park Rangers midfielder Wan Kuzain
On what went wrong during the game:
“It was just the early mistakes, obviously when you’re playing a team that’s organized and has experience, those early mistakes or mistakes in general are just going to punish us. After the first two goals it was kind of, ‘how do we get back into it?’ I thought we did well, we played our game after that but it was too tall of a mountain to climb.”
On if lack of consistency in the lineup adds an extra challenge:
“Yeah, I mean some of the guys you don’t really play much with but at the end of the day it’s no excuse. You have to play your game. We play the same system everywhere from the academy to the top so it’s really the same. It is challenging but it really shouldn’t be an excuse.”
Indy Eleven Head Coach Martin Rennie
Thoughts on the match:
“I think it was a great start for us in the game. Obviously, we got two goals and that put us in a great position. I thought that after that Swope Park were good on the ball. They had a lot of great attacks and put us under pressure. I thought we defended pretty well. Obviously, a bit disappointed to lose one, which was kind of a counter attack, but I thought in the second half we played really well. We kept the ball well and didn’t really give up chances. We scored a good goal and created some other really great chances. Great save from Eric Dick on the cross on the corner from Alex’s (Crognale) header. Great save on the one v one against Dane (Kelly) and then a couple of others that he did well on. I thought overall it was a good performance from us.”
On his plan coming into the game:
“Obviously, you can’t expect to score two goals that quickly, but we wanted to do that. We wanted to be in good positions up high on the field. After we did that, I thought Swope did a good job to really keep on playing and never giving up. That meant that once they got that goal making it two to one, it meant that third goal was really a big goal in the game. We got it. The next goal, which was our third, we got that and that really settled the game.”
Indy Eleven forward Dane Kelly
Thoughts on the match:
“I think it was a good game for us. We got a couple of chances. We scored two early goals. We set the pace for us and I think it was overall a good performance for us.”
On scoring two goals against his former team:
“It definitely feels pretty good. The last game we played I had a few chances and didn’t score, so it definitely feels good to finally score and finally get on the scorer’s sheet for 2019.”
On his confidence moving forward:
“This does a lot for me. Now I can finally go out and be a lot more confident in front of goal. So this does a lot. “
