SEATTLE REIGN FC at PORTLAND THORNS FC POSTGAME QUOTES
Saturday, May 11, 2024 • Providence Park • Portland, OR
Seattle Reign FC Head Coach Laura Harvey
On her thoughts on the big moments that impacted the game:
“Yeah, I thought in the first half we were the better team. I thought the first goal was really disappointing from us, just a long ball in the air that we didn’t defend well enough. Yeah, we had some chances, but ultimately, our quality wasn’t good enough and yeah, goals change games.”
On where the team goes from here and if there was an execution issue tonight:
“Goals change games. The second goal changed the absolute momentum of the game.”
On what she tried to tell the team after the second goal was conceded:
“Just said we had time. We tried to make some changes that didn’t really help us. Often, you know, when we make changes off the bench, it impacts us in positive ways, I don’t think it did tonight. But momentum shifts and when that second goal goes in, I feel like the game got stripped away from us.”
On if she got an explanation from the officials on the decision to award a penalty kick:
“No.”
Seattle Reign FC Captain and Defender Lauren Barnes and midfielder Jess Fishlock
On their overall remarks on tonight’s performance and result:
Fishlock: “Oh, you know, result sucks. It actually is horrific, feels terrible. I think up until their penalty, I mean, you look at two of their goals, they were absolutely nothing goals, to be honest – two set plays, a goal kick and a PK and I think up until that, we were right in it, if not the better team – created some chances, but the whole kind of lacking a little bit of quality in the final third that keeps kind of biting us in the ass right now. But I think after the after the penalty, it really knocked the wind out of us and then we tried to make some changes, try and get back in the game and when you do that, sometimes it kind of goes both ways and it kind of opened us up a little bit more than what we kind of would have hoped. Yeah, it sucks. I generally kind of want to know what the penalty rule is because I was for sure certain that if it took a deflection and went into your hand, then it’s not quite the same, but who knows what that is anymore? So honestly, like I said, up until the PK, I thought we were the better team and then it kind of just went downhill from there.”
On where the team goes from here mentally and tactically:
Barnes: “Yeah, I think we just have to stay bought in. We talked about it after the game and we’ve been talking about it. I mean, it’s been a rough start to the season in general. We need to stick to the game plan, keep believing in each other and keep moving forward – you have to put these games behind us. We need to watch film. We need to fix stuff and we need to do it quick. I mean, at the end of the day, this season’s wild, you can turn around just as fast as it goes down. So, we need to make sure we keep that in the back of our minds and keep chasing the ladder.”
On how they tried to regroup after the penalty kick:
Fishlock: “Yeah, look, I still say that up until the penalty, we were right in it, if not, I certainly felt like the better team. I felt like we were in control of kind of what we were doing and what they were doing. Could have got a goal in the first half easily, but the keeper made a great save and they got the ball off the line. They got the ball off the line again in the second half. So, up until that moment, super comfortable with what we’re doing. But once that kind of goes in, we have to kind of have a deep delve into ourselves as a group to try and fully understand what happened to us in that moment and then we were kind of just chasing the game at the end of the day. We don’t want to lose. We don’t want to lose here. Probably, the emotion of chasing the game here is probably a little bit different than chasing the game anywhere else and then we just kind of opened ourselves up and exposed ourselves to counterattacks, really, which Portland are very good at. So, I don’t think it’s anything big or anything drastic, but it is stuff that we have to sit down and be really open and honest with each other because I feel up until this point, and even during the game, we did the game plan, and for that first 60-70 minutes, we were absolutely fine, if not the better team. We stopped doing the game plan and all hell breaks loose, so we really have to look at ourselves as players and figure out why that was and why did that happen.”
On how they can help the attackers gain confidence in scoring:
Fishlock: “We just have to get on the training field and keep believing. I think there’s a fine balance between having that belief and keeping that confidence, but also understanding that we need to have quality and we need to have the expectation from our players in those areas and it’s not just our attackers, it’s midfielders, it’s just whoever is in those areas at that moment – is your run right? Is the ball right? We’re just a tiny bit off in those moments and that just comes down to, again, film, accountability, training and being ruthless, all that kind of stuff. In this league, you get one chance, two chance and – we score off that set play in the first half or we had a couple of crosses into an area that we’ve been working on and we’ve got no runs going in there and we need to figure out why we keep getting that and not connecting because if we do that, then we should have a goal. So, we have to be really ruthless on the field, but we have to be a little bit more ruthless off the field with what we’re trying to achieve as a group, I feel.”