Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja
Opening Statement
“Well, we feel very happy with the result. Winning at home in front of our fans, despite these difficult moments, they came and supported us, and I want to express our gratitude to them and that energy they brought to us in a game that we needed an extra push from us after a difficult week coming from playing on turf three days ago. We knew that today was going to be a big challenge on our physical with the humidity and all those things, but we had a lot of positive things: we scored four goals, we started seeing the individuals improve their performances, the collective obviously looks much better, and it was a difficult game. Chicago pushed a lot, and they had a lot of sequences and we had to defend lower than we wanted but it is a good result once again especially in front of our fans and hopefully we can continue [winning] because we need to find our way to turn things around.”
On Facundo Torres’ mentality this season
“We see the importance of having Facu on the team, we need him. Facu works really hard to have these performances that the team needs. Facu has been pushing himself really hard in training and we were expecting him to change things within our team by scoring goals. Facu has tremendous tactical generosity as its incredible, but Facu knew that we were asking for much more than that and that’s a lot of responsibility. Despite Facu’s age, Facu took on the responsibility and took the team to victory. As not only does Facu need to keep performing like that, but we expect that from everyone else as well on the team. As we are very happy to see Facu score and succeed.”
On Mason Stajduhar’s performance and how we can find a bit more balance
“I agree, I think tonight we saw the best of Mason and I know he has much more than that. He has been very patient while waiting for his opportunity, and at this moment when we needed him to step up in that position, he did it tonight and provided us with a lot of security. I felt that, because we were drained at the end, Chicago was taking shots, but Mason provided us a lot of security and we felt safe. So, congratulations to Mason, we are very proud of his performance. He deserves it, he works tremendously hard. Regarding the balance, I don’t know, Michael, we need to work on still finding our best version. We feel happy today for many things. We have been playing very well but we’re not winning, and we’re not winning because we are not scoring enough goals and I know we concede but I said 'guys if we concede one goal, we need to score two'. But if not, it's going to be difficult. So that balance is what we are aiming for and I understand we need to be better. We have changed our model, we have changed our formation to provide more density so we can defend better. Also, because we have had absences we had to change a bunch of things but our responsibility in that regard is that the individual improve the performance because the job, we have been here for year we know so I hope we can provide that we are looking for our best version still but today we must win the game and we did.”
Orlando City SC Forward Facundo Torres
Opening Statement
“It’s a great night for us. It was a great effort from the group. We know we played them about a month ago up on their field and we had a very complicated and difficult game in which we were leading for most of it and we ended up tied, so just to be able to get the win tonight is great.”
On his confidence after this week
“It obviously gives us and gives myself lots of confidence, especially when you’re going through a period working so hard and things don’t seem to come off. It can be really frustrating. It can be really difficult to get through, especially a couple of weeks ago getting left off the Copa America roster, it hurts. But the only thing you can do is pick your head up and go back to it and just work, work even harder so that way you can find those successes that are yet to come.”
On his two goals
“I think the first one was a play that was just very typical for me. When I received it outside like that on the wing, I like to try and bring it inside to get myself a better chance to finish and find a goal. So, when I took it inside, I was one on one with the defender and thankfully I was able to cut it just one more time and give myself an even better opportunity, which was just really typical of me and the way I like to play. And then the second one, when I receive it on the outside like that, I do like to hit it when I’ve got the opportunity. Sometimes it goes in, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Orlando City SC Forward Iván Angulo
Opening Statement
“First off, obviously it’s a great feeling tonight to get the victory. That was the form that we had been looking for. It was nice to see it finally come to fruition on the field and together as a team and kind of those things we’ve been working on.”
On his goal and celebration
“The play was a situation where Dagur [Dan Thórhallsson] was bringing it in from the right, and he was trying to cross it over to get it to Duncan [McGuire] in the center and when the deflection happened it just kind of bounced to me, and thankfully all I had to was put it into the goal. And then obviously the celebration was a moment that me and my family have been waiting for to celebrate the success in our lives together and so that celebration was for her.”
On balancing scoring goals and strong defensive performance
“We have to take the confidence that we’ve been receiving this last week forward and continue to build on that confidence. Obviously in the last couple of games, to be able to score more, to be able to finish off more of those chances, has been great, so I think we need to continue with that. And then on the other part, to be able to focus on those little details, on those things that we’re kind of still missing on the defensive end. And it’s not just on the defense to work on that, that’s a focus for the whole team that we need to place an importance on moving forward in this last half of the season so that way we can solidify the rest of our games.”
