Sporting Kansas City forward and captain Johnny Russell
On Sporting’s 3-1 loss to LAFC…
It’s a really tough place to come, especially with the kind of racing we’re in right now. I think we played very well, especially in the first half. I thought we were coming back to ourselves by keeping the ball well. I think Marinos also gave us a little something different. He created a lot of opportunities. Until conceding a goal just before half-time, and it was poor on our part. Obviously you want to try and advance to halftime and then work on it from there. The second goal (from LAFC) is a bit magical, really. It’s a nice strike and it kind of kills you and then they get the third one from there. It will always be difficult to come back against a quality team. We ran out of steam at the end, so it’s hard to take it. It’s a tough position we’re in, but we just have to keep fighting and find a way out. The positive signs from the first half show us that we can come here against one of the best teams in the league and show what we can do. We have to stick together and some of the announced goals are quite weak, to be honest.
On what needs to change for Sporting to start clicking…
We all need to improve our game, individually and as a team. We all need to lift each other up and fight harder for each other. Then our quality will shine. We’ve shown it at times this season how good we can be, but we just haven’t done it consistently. We cause each other problems the other way around. It’s up to all of us as a team. We have to defend better as a team and we have to attack better as a team. It’s also on us attackers. We are nowhere near the standards we set last year, so we need to get back to that level. When we concede goals, we have to make sure we get some on the other side as well.
On Sporting’s mentality in recent weeks…
In this game, mentality comes in different ways. I think we showed in the first half the way we planned to come here and play, things are not going well for us but we didn’t want to settle down and invite pressure and feel sorry for ourselves. We wanted to go out and do what we were capable of and what we should be doing, which is keeping the ball and attacking the teams. I thought we did very well in the first half, but their goal before half time took our breath away a bit. At stages in the second half we did, but we probably didn’t reach the standards we set for ourselves in the first half. The mentality of the guys is to go out there and win every game. It’s not happening right now but we don’t have any guys who are going to sink under the pressure. It is time for us to turn the tide. It’s easy to talk about it. We can talk about winning games, but it’s time we really have to start pulling ourselves together and changing this season.
On Sporting’s attacking struggles…
I feel it’s only a matter of time. We are missing players, we haven’t had a coherent line-up and we haven’t managed to find ourselves in attack yet. We have too many quality players all over the pitch not to create chances or score goals. I’m not going to lie, it was extremely frustrating. I’m not afraid it will be like this all year. I trust my teammates and myself that we will all succeed, but now is the time to do it. We can’t keep losing games. It’s a horrible position and a horrible feeling after games. We have to turn things around and the good thing is that we have two home games to come. So we have to go take the first one. We have to go with everything we have, fight for everything and come out with three points. No other result is good enough for us.
