Swope Park Rangers Head Coach Paulo Nagamura
On Sebastian Cruz and Jahon Rad’s first career start…
Overall, I think they were okay. We are talking about 16 and 17 year olds starting a professional game for the first time. I think for the most part they handled themselves well. I think they still have to adapt to the speed of the game and the intensity of the professional level, but I think it was a great experience for those young guys.
On adjustments at the half…
We were not doing well in pressuring the defense, so I tried to adjust that at halftime. Also, we took a little bit out of the back to see if we could break Orange County and I think we did a decent job for the first 20 minutes where we had them against the ropes a little bit, but we could not find the goal to tie the game. After we took the second [goal], I think the guys fell asleep there and it was just a lack of concentration, lack of effort and lack of committing to finish the game strong.
On preparing for Sunday’s match…
First, we need to recover and watch the tapes and see what we did wrong and what we did right. We’ll correct the things that we have to correct and get ready for Sunday’s game.
Swope Park Rangers Midfielder Jahon Rad
On the feeling of his first professional start…
It was great for me, but the result was not there. We worked hard, but we are just going to rest up now and work for the next game.
On his shots on goal…
I got a few good looks, but I just did not hit it right. We had some chances to get back into the game, but we were not clinical. It was not our night.
On preparing for Sunday’s game…
We have an off day and then we will have training and we will go from there.
Orange County SC Head Coach Braeden Cloutier
On preparation for tonight’s match…
I think the best preparation for us was Saturday night’s game against San Antonio FC because San Antonio played very similar to how Swope plays. We changed our system up just a little bit and we worked on it last week and it worked very well against San Antonio and we just carried it over to tonight.
On how the lead affected the second half…
It was huge. I know we definitely wanted to come out and set the tone. I thought our press was very good. To get that early goal was fantastic because I know we have a lot of heavy legs right now dealing with the humidity, but we kept our shape really well after we scored the goal. I knew it was a matter of time. If we could possess it, we could get more opportunities in the second half and then ultimately we took our chances and finished off the game.
On preparing for their next match…
Take it one game at a time. Obviously, it is going to be a lot of recovery right now and tomorrow. We travel on Friday to Saint Louis and get ourselves ready for Saint Louis, but definitely a lot of recovery tonight like ice baths, massages and hydration. I think the biggest thing for us is to take it one game at a time. We definitely wanted to make a statement. We have played the top teams in our league and we have not gotten the result, but we played very well. We knew coming into tonight we wanted to make a statement saying we are for real and have a go at a top team. I think we did that tonight.
