Houston Dynamo FC 2-2 FC Dallas
Houston Dynamo FC 2-2 FC Dallas
Dynamo head coach Tab Ramos
(on tonight’s game) “I thought in general the first half was good. The team pressured well, recovered a lot of balls, and created a bunch of chances. Unfortunately, we went into halftime only one goal up and obviously it was anybody’s game. I thought the second half was a very close game. Again, I still feel like we made two big mistakes that allowed them to get back into the game and then we fought to come back and to tie it and to try to win it all the way to the end and unfortunately we ran out of time.»
(on individual mistakes) «It’s difficult, because the moment they scored their first goal, there was really no reason to think we weren’t going to win the game and we just kept losing balls in midfield and not taking care of the ball. It would’ve been easy to just hold possession and make them chase. We talked about that, let’s keep the ball, let’s make them chase and eventually we’ll get more chances. But, we couldn’t keep the ball. I think our possession let us down one more time and it’s difficult because when you can’t hold the ball, you’re constantly under pressure.»
(on sitting down for most of the second half) «No, I felt like we had the right lineup in the game. I felt like we had given all the instructions in the first half and in particular at halftime as well. I said at halftime that I put a little bit of the responsibility on the older guys on the team to kind of get the other guys going and make sure we don’t lose this lead. Unfortunately, we lost the lead. We made the change when we needed to make it and maybe a little bit late, but we felt that we had the right people in the game and that eventually we’d get our chances. Griffin Dorsey has been really dangerous on the right side, and we feel at the moment he’s the one that can get us the most chances.»
(on only making one substitution this game) «I really didn’t feel at that particular time that there was going to be any substitution that was going to change the game. I feel pretty confident that we’ve given all the players an opportunity. At the moment, I thought Fafa (Picault) was doing fairly well, I thought Maxi (Urruti) was working really hard, I thought Griff (Dorsey) was again, the one creating opportunities for us and I still wanted to bring a forward. So, we brought in Ari (Lassiter) and dropped Maxi into midfield just to add one more forward because I thought Ari did pretty well the last game in Salt Lake City. So, we really had the players that are in best form in the game and that’s what we wanted at the end of the game. Unfortunately, we couldn’t win it.»
(on the fight to at least get the draw) «I feel good about that and I’ve said that all along. The team has to fight in it, we have to fight. I think it’s important to recognize that we have to have the fight when we’re winning too. I think sometimes we relax a little bit when we’re in the lead and that’s not the moment to relax. We said at halftime, let’s get another goal and let’s get two and let’s put this game away. By no means did we want to relax at halftime, but unfortunately, we had to fight from behind again. The one thing that I will give the team is that the team fights, they fight for each other. Unfortunately, we just can’t get a (win) right now.»
(on the next three games at home) «I think what’s important is that we have to worry about us. We have to continue in the right path in terms of creating chances. I think eventually the chances will start going in. Obviously, Minnesota (United) is a great team that’s coming here next, but I think we have to think more about us. There’s no reason why we couldn’t win these games, there really isn’t. Just like today, today should’ve been a win.»
(on a dam about to break as soon as they get a win) «I do feel that and I said that to the team. In MLS this is around the time when teams start to get hot. At the moment, we’ve still played more away games than home games and that’s a little bit of a disadvantage for us. Once we get these three home games, I really believe we can get back in it and let’s not forget we have Tyler Pasher who’s still not available to us and he’s the one that scores probably the most goals per minute. We need to have him on the field. We also signed Corey Baird, who has a lot of quality. He can do the things Griff (Dorsey) is doing but then he can score as well. So, I think with those two guys back and I’m hoping that they’ll be back for next week.»
Director técnico del Houston Dynamo Tab Ramos
(sobre si hubo cansancio en los jugadores) “Si. Hubo tres jugadores que me tenían preocupado por ese tema. “Coco” (Adalberto Carrasquilla) porque recién comienza a tomar el ritmo de la liga y lo tuvimos que sacar. Los otros jugadores eran Maxi (Urruti) y Matías (Vera). En el caso de Matías me gusta preguntarle a él, porque es un trabajador increíble en la cancha, que para sacarlo tiene que él pedirlo. Dudé en sacarlo y menos mal que no lo hice porque anotó el empate. En el caso de Maxi, solo había jugado 30 minutos el miércoles. El otro podría ser (Griffin) Dorsey porque viene jugando muchos minutos por juego, pero aguantó bien hasta el final”.
(sobre qué sentiste cuando entró el segundo gol) “Quería irme del estadio, desaparecer. Habíamos hecho tanto en el juego y ver ese gol. Me sentí muy mal por todos”.
(sobre el segundo gol del Dynamo) “Hubo entusiasmo otra vez. Los jugadores nunca se dan por vencidos. Matías (Vera) siempre se echa el equipo al hombro”.
(sobre que fue la mejor cara del Dynamo) “En el primer tiempo sí. Contra Dallas el planteamiento fue bueno. Los limitamos a casi ninguna ocasión. En el segundo tiempo las ocasiones que crearon fueron por errores nuestros. En general, hubo buen planteamiento. Esto es cuestión de equipo. No hay culpa de nadie en particular”.
(sobre cómo evalúa este partido de altibajos de altibajos) “El segundo gol es muy importante porque en los últimos tres partidos hemos tenido entre 50 y 55 disparos al arco. Y este es el primer gol que hacemos en jugada, los otros fueron en tiro de esquina o cobro de falta. Pelota parada”.
(sobre a quién le atribuye más responsabilidad porque ya mañana se cumplen tres meses de la última victoria) “La respuesta es fácil. La responsabilidad es siempre del entrenador. Cuando uno se encarga de un equipo asume la responsabilidad. Todos los entrenadores del mundo necesitan jugadores. Uno no puede venir a quejarse. La responsabilidad es mía. No podría decir que los jugadores no entienden. Somos uno de los mejores equipos presionando y creando ocasiones. El problema es que después no convertimos. Al momento de no convertir no se consiguen los resultados. Y para eso está el entrenador”.
(sobre cuál es tu sentimiento como aficionado) “No podemos responder preguntas hipotéticas. El aficionado no puede estar contento. Es el Derby. No importa nada. El Clásico que se juega en casa hay que ganarlo”.
Dynamo FW Fafa Picault
(on today’s game) «It’s the derby. We obviously wanted to win and we haven’t won in awhile and I think everybody is aware of that. It’s not a great feeling coming out with a tie at home, but it’s done now, there’s some character. We obviously went up and wanted to hold that lead in along with scoring. But we fell behind 2-1 and then we found a way back in to get the second goal. There’s some character, and some positive there but at the end of the day, we are bummed to not come out with three points.»
(on being resilient) «I think that’s just a character [team character] that we are apart of, and the team culture that we have built. To not give up in games, and obviously we didn’t want to go down and it’s not something we want to continue to do going into the rest of the season. But it happened, and we have to react; we can’t beat ourselves up during the rest of the game. We have to be resilient and find ways to come back into the game and come back with three points, like tonight.»
(on the next three home games) «It’s important to play at home. We know how MLS is, travel is crazy and the flights are four hours and you’re coming back home at 5AM and it’s not easy. We have three games at home after this and we get to stay in Houston. It’s very important that we get points here, it’s crucial for us; we know that and we aren’t un-aware of that. We’re just going to put our heads in the game and work and get ready for the next games, and let the teams come to us. We’ve been on the road a lot over the last two to three months. It’s important that we pick up a lot of points over the next stretch and I think the next win will get the monkey off our back; we just need the rhythm again and the feeling. And once we get that feeling of closing out games with three points, we’ll keep it going.»
(on the need to fix individual events) «It’s unfortunate but football is a game of mistakes. Dallas made a few as well that maybe we didn’t capitalize on. Maybe we didn’t see them coming, and we didn’t score on the game. It’s a game of mistakes and overall, we just have to be better and we can’t sit here and point out one person or two people. It’s a team game, 11 of us on the field, guys on the bench so it’s a whole group, club, and team. We just have to do better and we can’t pick out one person.»
(on thoughts about Tab Ramos using one sub during the game) «I mean I’m just on the field, to be honest, I didn’t pay attention to that. I’m just trying to win the game while I’m on the field and whoever is on the pitch with me at the time is who I’m working with and that’s it.»
(on a personal level, finding more back of the net) «Yeah, it’s what I expect of myself, obviously I’ve done it in the past besides Dallas here, that was a low year stat-wise for me for tactical reasons. This is what I expect from myself, a lot of people in the league forgot that I scored goals, but I’ve been doing this since I came back to MLS in 2017. If people want to go back and watch the highlights and stats, but it’s what I do and that’s what they brought me here to do and that’s what I expected from myself. It obviously took a while and I was doing other things on the field that I thought were helpful for the team. I do whatever I have to do to help the team whether it’s run defensively, make runs to let somebody else score. Right now I’m scoring and I hope to keep doing that and more than that, I hope we start winning games but I’ll do everything that I can on the pitch to help my team win and if it’s scoring, assist, or just making a run for somebody else’s score, I’m just as happy.»
(on team reaction after Dallas’ second goal) «Nothing specifically was said, it’s one of those moments where you’re like «ah crap here we go again», but we also knew we had a lot of time and we have a lot of character. Today we had such a spirit in the locker room before the game that we just, couldn’t lose this game. Again, it’s not that we came away happy with a tie but we knew we couldn’t lose this game, and Mati [Vera] did very well to take a great strike and put us back in it, and at that point, it felt like we were going to win this game and we had a chance to win it but it’s just something that we’ve gotten used to as a group fighting whatever we have to do to keep ourselves in games. I repeated Mati (Vera), Mati had a great strike and kept us in, so different guys got to step up and he did well there.»
(on the feeling in the locker room about winning) «It’s unfortunate, honest that a lot of it’s falling on coach (Tab Ramos), we’re actually just sometimes shooting ourselves in the foot, we have certain games where we should just finish them out. It’s pretty simple. If you watch the games, I know people go on Twitter, some of the people on Twitter don’t even watch the game, if I’m being frank and honest. We don’t see them in the stands, so if we go play games we’re trying to win the game, a lot of them we’re just not closing out to be very simple. We need to close them out, some of these games we’ve had where we could have tied, we lost and last game, we could’ve won it easily. We were attacking them, we were right down their throats every play and that was our game for the taking and it didn’t go our way. It’s unfortunate because every game seems like the same thing and it seems like an excuse, but the reality is that of our football right now, we’re not getting the results and it’s fine for people to complain, it’s normal because we’re not winning, we can’t say anything right now, we should be winning games. At the end of the day, we know what we can do and we believe in each other and we believe in this group and we know that once we get that win we will pull things together and continue.»
Dynamo MF Matias Vera (translated from Spanish)
(on today’s game) “This is bittersweet, we wanted to win for the fans today. I think we did lose focus for brief moment, the game just got away from us for a bit. Now, we have to focus on the road ahead. We have to win nine points during the remaining games, we just have to win.”
(on the emotion of scoring in the Texas Derby) “I am very glad to help the team, I always want to do my part. I would of preferred to win, this is a difficult situation. The only way to get over the hump is to keep winning.”
(on the pressure of not winning since May) “This is a difficult situation, you can see the effort on the field. We have created a lot of opportunities, but we are struggling to find that final touch. We are also having to navigate different issues on the other side of the field, defensively. We have to make sure that we don’t lose focus and overlook the fundamentals. We need to continue to build on our foundation and grow from there. At the end of the day, we have to finish our chances and put games away.”
Mediocampista del Houston Dynamo FC Matias Vera
(sobre las sensaciones del juego) “Sensaciones agridulces porque queríamos regalarle un triunfo a los aficionados. Creo que por un momento hubo desconcentración, se nos escapó. Hay que pensar en lo que viene. Quedan 9 puntos en casa y hay que ganarlos”.
(sobre las sensaciones del gol) “Obviamente contento por ayudar al equipo. Alegría de poder aportar. Me hubiese gustado más si servía para ganar. Estamos en una situación complicada. La manera de salir es trabajando”.
(sobre el sentimiento del equipo y la presión que sienten debido a tener tres meses sin ganar) “Es una situación complicada. Se ve el esfuerzo del equipo. Creamos muchas situaciones, pero nos cuesta convertir, igual en defensa nos está costando un poco. Hay que seguir por lo básico. Mantener el cero. Empezar a hacernos fuertes desde ahí. Las chances las creamos hay que terminarlas”.
(sobre a quién le dedicaste este gol) “A mi familia, a mi esposa, mis dos hijas que siempre nos acompañan. Seguiremos peleando hasta el final”.
(sobre el sentimiento cuando entró el gol y más en el Clásico, la rivalidad) “Alegría, satisfacción. Hace varios partidos he tenido opciones de gol y no la había podido meter. Contento por aportar. Ahora lo importante es seguir mejorando para cambiar la situación”.
(sobre cómo lo comparas con otros clásicos) “Cada Clásico es diferente. Queríamos ganarlo. En el desarrollo siempre se vio esa intención de ganar. Fuimos hacia delante con mucha gente. Era importante ganar para lo anímico, no pudimos, pero siempre se ve el esfuerzo en la cancha. Intentamos darle alegría a nuestra fanaticada”.
(sobre qué tan importante era no perder este juego) “Perder iba a ser duro por la situación que vivimos. Era un Clásico y en casa. No lo pudimos ganar, pero tampoco lo perdimos. Es importante. Quedan 9 puntos más en casa. Con estos nueve puntos nos acomodamos en la tabla. La liga está muy pareja. Debemos estar más positivos que nunca”.