Home / MLS / Philadelphia Union post match quotes

Philadelphia Union post match quotes

Union PSL

Philadelphia Union post game quotes after 2-1 loss in Kansas City.

Philadelphia manager John Hackworth

General thoughts on the match…
“It’s tough because I think we played a really good game for parts of it. I thought we made some pretty poor mistakes in other parts. I don’t think the mistakes that we made can be made against a team of the caliber of Sporting Kansas City. They’re a good team, you have to give full credit to them, but I’m also proud of my team because I thought we stood toe-to-toe with them for a long time and had numerous opportunities to go up in the game.  We were unfortunate to not get at least one more goal in there.  Jack McInerny hits the post on a header inches away from Nielsenin the first half. It’s tough. It’s disappointing but at the same time I thought we played well and well enough to get a result here. It’s kind of been our story the whole year.  We play at the same level but we gave up opportunities.”

On going into the second half down a goal…
“We just made a couple of tactical adjustments. We brought in Antoine Hoppenot into the game.  To Gabriel Gomez’s credit, he played really well in the first half but we saw that Sporting was playing a high line and we thought we could get behind them with Antoine’s speed. It was a little bit of a gamble but when you’re down 1-0 on the road you have nothing to lose.  65-70 minutes in I didn’t think there was a chance we were going to lose the game.”

On looking ahead to their season finale against New York this Saturday…
“We have to recover. This has been our second game in four days. We’ve got some tired bodies in there- mentally and physically. We’re a little banged up- we’ve got some injuries. We’ve got to regenerate. I know we will be ready for New York on Saturday.”

Philadelphia Union forward Antoine Hoppenot

On the team’s improved performance in the second half…
“We knew we just wanted to get the ball forward and into their half.  We felt we were playing too much in our half too much the first half.  Our center midfielders did a great job pushing the ball up and creating chances and finding us. Cruz did a great job drawing the penalty and fortunately I was there to rebound and score.”

On the quick turnaround when they face New York on Saturday…
“We’re used to it. We’ve had a lot of quick turnarounds. We know what we need to do and we will be ready for Saturday.”

Philadelphia Union defender Amobi Okugo…

General thoughts on the match…
“It’s a tough matchup every time we play Sporting KC with the recent results this past season when we beat them 4-0 at our place and they beat us at home in the Open Cup semifinal. Especially with the setting for this game, if they win or tie it was always going to be a tough game. I thought we matched up pretty well. It took us a little while to get into it. But you saw in the second half that it was a dogfight. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the result we wanted.”

On the team’s improved performance in the second half…
“We came in at half time and coach did a good pep talk.  We didn’t do as well as we thought we should have in the first half and we didn’t want KC to celebrate here in front of us at our expense so I think that motivated us a little bit.”

On the season finale against New York…
“New York is a rivalry game. We haven’t beat them this season so we have to give the home fans something to remember going into offseason and to build into next season. We have to get out of this slump that we’ve been in with two road losses and it’s going to be good to end the season at home against one of our rivals.”