NOTES
- Whitecaps FC now sit in seventh place in the Western Conference with 37 points
- Daigo Kobayashi's goal was his first in MLS play since March 9 against Columbus Crew at BC Place
- Kenny Miller's assist was his first of the season
QUOTES
VANCOUVER WHITECAPS FC
HEAD COACH MARTIN RENNIE
General thoughts on the match…
Obviously it was a shocker tonight. It shows you how cruel the game can be. We started off the game really well and got an excellent goal. But at the end of the day, Dallas scored three incredible goals on the night and that’s disappointing for us because I think that if you look at overall performance, we played well. They had three shots on target and they had three goals. They were unbelievable goals against us so it’s disappointing but there is a lot we can take from it. I don’t think it was a poor performance. It was a good performance. I need to see the last little bit again and see how we lost those goals but I do feel they scored great goals tonight. But as disappointing as that is, we can bounce back from it. It’s a performance we can definitely build on.
On what the team needs to do to make playoffs…
We’ve got to climb to get up there but I still feel like we’ll get there. We’ve been here before. It was a tough struggle to get there last year and it will be this year. It’s very close. There are a lot of games left to play, seven games, lots of points to play for… We need to do well in the next couple of games but I don’t think that hurts our confidence. It is something we have to get over quickly.
We had a couple of decent chances, it was just that in the final third when we were breaking out, we didn’t put that final pass together well enough. That was a disappointment. We had a couple of half chances we didn’t make the most of but we felt really comfortable in the game. In the second half I don’t think we had any shots on goal. I don’t think there were even any dangerous chances. They scored a goal almost at nothing. It was a long ball that we defended okay, and it was just a great volley. Then the goal after that… You can try that a hundred times and it’s not going to go in again.
GOALKEEPER DAVID OUSTED
General thoughts on the match…
We need to win on the road. We have two away games next and we need to get at least one win. It was tough tonight. We deserved more than we got.
On playing in 100+ degree heat…
It is definitely a factor but I don’t want to make an excuse. It’s equal for both teams. It’s definitely something that drops the tempo down a little bit. We coped fine. We played a good game but we just got punished by some terrible goals.
On the early goals by both teams…
It was a great start, a good goal, unfortunately a couple minutes later they got in and put one in the corner so it was too bad we couldn’t keep the momentum.
On FC Dallas’ final goal from midfield…
It’s a great goal but obviously I’m not happy with my role in it. I need to be quicker getting back and defending my goal. I was looking to stay high and maybe to get the pass in deep but he just hit it amazingly.
DEFENDER NIGEL REO-COKER
On the result…
They way I look at it, we’ve just got to keep on going. It’s as simple as that. We made it difficult for them and we know they’re one of the good teams in the league. They play good football and it wasn’t an easy game for them. But we lost on three fantastic strikes. Sometimes in football there’s nothing you can do about that. Overall, I think they deserved it.
On the heat…
You have to be smart about these things. You acclimatize to different climates and different temperatures. 90 per cent of football is about using your brain. For us, we’re not used to this heat and humidity. That’s not an excuse so we have to come with a game plan. We have to be compact, tight, and difficult to beat on the counterattack. We did that today but I just felt they were the better team. They scored three fantastic goals and they deserved to win.
