That loss to the Crew was no doubt a tough one to swallow, but in the end it may have come down to individual mistakes more than anything else. Those mistakes can be corrected, and Buck felt confident that the team would work them out in time for Wednesday’s game.
“We have got to take our chances and we’ve got to fix some errors,” he said. “Sometimes, just a lapse of focus can cost us goals and games. As a team, we’re looking to fix that and to keep improving as a team.”
Similarly, Porter said that his takeaways from the game boiled down to precision in attack and focus in defense, both areas in which mental improvements can be made.
“I don’t think it was so much tactics that cost us; it’s the finishing,” he said. “We had four really good chances to score. We didn’t score and that would have changed the game. Defensively, there were moments that we just needed to be more alert, more switched on, more hungry. It wasn’t a ton tactical that we did wrong. In fact, to start the game, everything was going as planned and we should have been up 2-0. That’s the other thing, you’ve got to finish your chances. Against good teams, they’re going to get chances, you’re going to get chances. It’s going to come down to who finishes. I just think on the day, they finished theirs and we didn’t.”
Porter added that one loss didn’t define the team – certainly not one against the defending league champions – and said that he was urging his players to not lose sight of how well they had played during their four-match winning streak through the month of June.
“I reminded the guys that we won four in a row,” he said. “We’re playing really well and we can’t forget about that. But we do need to use this last game as a little bit of a wake-up call and to continue to remind ourselves that we have to keep improving.”
