Orlando Pride Head Coach Marc Skinner
On Kristen Edmonds’ performance
“I thought she was excellent tonight considering that’s her first 90 [minutes] in a long time. I thought she was excellent, I thought all my players were excellent. Again, individual decision-making at times yes, but if you’re going to judge them on that then nobody will have a good game. I thought they were excellent, I thought they gave everything. Like last week it’s a freak situation where you’re having to play, we went to a 3-1-3-3 in the end. In fact, we pushed one of the 10 into two nines, so we effectively had four forwards on the pitch because we were trying to get into a game that we didn’t deserve to be out of.”
On bringing Alex Morgan into the match
“We would’ve liked to have Alex earlier, but obviously we have to manage the injury she picked up when she was away at the World Cup. I’m not going to risk the careers of players for chasing a result which shouldn’t have been in jeopardy. We were given us a strict time amount, because of the amount of actions that she made during that period, but it changes the dynamic of what we can do with Alex up top. Alex is our forward, so you can put balls into the box from crossing situations which we’ve been trying to do. We’ve had wingers up front all year, we’ve got wingers playing up front. The recruitment that has been stowed over the last three years has not been good enough, as in it’s got to be more consistent and we have to build a whole basis of a squad, not just put superstars on the field. And that’s what I’m going to do and I’m going to build it and build it and build it and then we can play the balls into Alex. Alex will score goals for this Club. I’m building the team around players like that. Obviously we’re going to miss a Marta in this, she can pick pockets, so you’re going to miss those and the girls that have played in front, all credit to them. They did what they could do, but when she came on she changed the dynamic because we could change the dynamic for the first time in how long, since game three or four? It’s the first time we could change the dynamic, so my job is now to build a rounded squad where we can have different ways of winning the game, not just hope and that for me is what we’re building here.”
Orlando Pride Defender Shelina Zadorsky
Thoughts on the game
“Obviously very frustrating that we haven’t consistently put together results. Of course there’s things to complain about the referees and what not but me personally I want to be a team that gets past that and puts games away early. So I think that we’ve got a lot of work to do and our staff is working as hard as they possibly can and I think the players are too. I think it’s just taking time to become the consistent team that we want to be.”
On how difficult it is to defend Utah forwards Christen Press and Amy Rodriguez
“Yeah, I think that both of them have been on fire for a bit this season so I mean with Rodriguez you get runs and then she likes to kind of hang off your back shoulder almost an offside position so it makes it tough to know where she is at all times. Then you get Press who is just a technician and really good with the ball and obviously one of the best dribblers. So I think it was really unfortunate that she got in behind our line because despite that and despite those two chances, I felt that we were pretty solid. I felt that we had a decent line, we covered for each other well and it’s just really unfortunate that it comes down to those small errors.”
On the lessons learned during the season
“At this point it’s being a professional and taking pride in every moment you have on this pitch. I mean, we live an awesome life getting to play for the Orlando Pride and we need to, no pun intended, take pride in that and show up and absolutely be able to dominate games and put away games. My aim doesn’t change. I want to win every game, we want to as a team. I think that in terms of learning process, it’s learning from the mistakes and being brutally honest with your own performance, first and foremost, and really correcting those mistakes and bringing that to each and every game. I think we are building a culture that we don’t want to be a soft team, we don’t want people to think ‘Oh, we are playing the Pride, this is going to be an easy run. We want to be a really, really dominant team and for me it’s being aggressive and I think I’ve learned that a lot this season.”
Orlando Pride Forward Rachel Hill
Thoughts on the game
“I think obviously the result isn’t what we wanted, as everyone knows. But I think everyone on the field tonight gave it their all, and that’s not what we’re lacking. I think it’s getting better. There’s times that we need to stay more focused, but overall I think that everyone gave their all tonight and we did the best we could.”
On why building up to attack was difficult
“I think the way that we started the second half kind of, we dug ourselves a hole. We didn’t come out with enough energy, I don’t think. If we had and we’d gotten some of the ball in the beginning of the second half, it might’ve been a different game and things might’ve been a bit easier for us. But with the way we came out, and they saw a lot of the ball in the beginning of that second half, it just made it really difficult for us to get back into it because they were building so much momentum.”
On what needs to change in attacking play after second straight match without a goal
“I think we just need to be more ruthless. I think we need, our mentality needs to be that we’re gonna attack them, we’re gonna kill them, we’re gonna go at them, I just don’t think it’s quite been there, for pretty much any of us. I just think mentality-wise we need to be just deadly, and really take every chance we get. If we mess up, if we give the ball away, who cares? We’re in our final third, we’ll win it back type mentality. So yeah, I just think we need to get at goal more.”
