Match Data
SUMMARY
Seattle Sounders FC 2 - Orlando City SC 1
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Venue: CenturyLink Field
Referee: Dave Gantar
Assistants: Jeff Hosking, Jeremy Kieso
Fourth Official: Farhad Dadkho
VAR: Daniel Radford
Attendance: 37,722
Weather: 60 degrees and mostly cloudy
SCORING SUMMARY
SEA - Raúl Ruidíaz (Brad Smith, Harry Shipp) 19’
SEA - Handwalla Bwana (Nicolas Lodeiro) 68’
ORL - Chris Mueller (Dillon Powers) 75’
MISCONDUCT SUMMARY
ORL - Dom Dwyer (caution) 79’
ORL - Oriol Rosell (caution) 89’
LINEUPS & STATS
Seattle Sounders FC - Stefan Frei; Kelvin Leerdam, Román Torres, Kim Kee-hee, Brad Smith (Alex Roldan 86’); Jordy Delem, Cristian Roldan, Jordan Morris (Handwalla Bwana 53’), Nicolás Lodeiro - captain, Harry Shipp (Nouhou 67’); Raúl Ruidíaz
Substitutes not used: Bryan Meredith, Jonathan Campbell, Saad Abdul-Salaam, Will Bruin
Total shots: 14 (Shipp, 4)
Shots on goal: 3 (Three players, 1)
Fouls: 4 (Ruidíaz, 3)
Offside: 3 (Ruidíaz, 2)
Corner-kicks: 5 (Lodeiro, 5)
Saves: 0
Orlando City SC - Greg Ranjitsingh; Lamine Sane, Kyle Smith, Shane O’Neill; Sacha Kljestan - captain, Danilo Acosta (Joao Moutinho 85’), Benji Michel, Dillon Powers, Oriol Rosell; Josue Colman (Chris Mueller 73’), Santiago Patino (Dom Dwyer 63’)
Substitutes not used: Adam Grinwis, Cristian Higuita, Sebastian Mendez, Kamal Miller
Total shots: 10 (Mueller/Rosell, 2)
Shots on goal: 1 (Mueller, 1)
Fouls: 11 (Four players, 2)
Offside: 0
Corner-kicks: 3 (Colman, 3)
Saves: 1 (Ranjitsingh, 1)
Post-Match Quotes
SOUNDERS FC HEAD COACH BRIAN SCHMETZER
On Handwalla Bwana’s play:
“It was good, you know the kid had deserved minutes. The reason why it was a tough choice to start Harry [Shipp] or Bwana in place of Víctor [Rodríguez] - I went with Harry because he is steady, I like what he gives, but you can see that Bwana has that flair, he’s got good technical ability. You know, I’m happy to have both of those players to use when I need to.”
On the importance of the last two wins in the face of many upcoming road games:
“We’ve been traditionally a good road team. All home wins are important. I have a lot of confidence in that group. You can look at this game and say ‘Okay, was it our best soccer performance?’ Yeah, there’s things we could do better. You know, final third again, we can address that, get half chances and full chances. One thing that this team possesses that always does and is going to help us on the road is that they don’t like to lose. They hate to lose. They put it in out there. That was a tough [game]. It put us under pressure. I’m fully confident that we can take some points out of the road games we are about to face.”
On Román Torres and Jordy Delem:
“Román was great. He brings experience, leadership, organizational skills. His heading, his brute strength and you know I want to make a special acknowledgement of Jordy Delem because a lot of times when we watch Jordy play, he’s always been good about breaking up plays and being physical and he likes to tackle people, but some of the things that you guys need to watch on your replay is some of the nuances on what he’s doing. His body position is getting better. His ability to turn out and release pressure and get the ball out to the other side has been the work of Delem in training to get better at that. And that’s how he’s going to stay on the field longer. He’s going to have a longer career because he’s picking up some of those nuances.”
SOUNDERS FC MIDFIELDER HANDWALLA BWANA
On the last 15 minutes:
“It was a very difficult match, it was an ugly game. But sometimes we defended really well and we fought.”
On his goal:
“If Nico [Lodeiro] has the ball, you have to run up because you know the ball is going to get there, that’s Nico. Even in training he just tells you if I look up you just run and that’s what I did, and he found me.”
On traveling to Philadelphia tomorrow:
“It’s good that we won tonight because then our confidence is really high heading into Philadelphia. It’s going to be difficult because we have four away games and hopefully can come away with some results.”
SOUNDERS FC FORWARD RAÚL RUIDÍAZ (THROUGH TRANSLATOR)
On finally scoring after having previous chances in games and not scoring:
“Yeah it was a difficult moment, all of us forward players want to always score and when we don’t it’s not a good moment. But the important thing was that we got three points in those games and today we were able to get another three points.”
On the play of Brad Smith and Harry Shipp:
“They are both great, great players. Very smart players. They were able to build up a very nice play on that [goal] and send it over to me and I was in the right place to put it away.”
SOUNDERS FC DEFENDER BRAD SMITH
On playing with Raúl Ruidíaz:
“Not just with Raúl, we have a bunch of strikers. I’m always looking for [Raúl] when he gets to the line and today it was, it worked well. We could have gotten a few more goals from crosses but we did well and we did get the win.”
On adjusting to working with different players with Víctor Rodríguez out:
“When I came last year, Víctor was injured so it was me and Harry [Shipp] so we’ve always had that chemisty with each other. And Víctor is a similar player, the way they move and come inside and pass the ball and are always dribbling. It works well with me, Harry or Víctor.”
On the challenges of opponents he’s gone up against:
“I think that for me personally just playing the games and gaining confidence in my defending is just really growing and I’m kind of showing it in the games. It was a different type of test, last week it was very fast and they were on top of me and stuff and that was good defensive form for the team. Sloppy to concede the goal but like I said we got the win at home and we are ready for these four away games.”
—
ORLANDO CITY HEAD COACH JAMES O’CONNOR
On the match:
“Obviously we’re bitterly disappointed not to get anything from the game. We felt we had a decent amount of possession and caused them some problems. Overall the killer instinct in the final piece - we just needed more. Great little bit of magic from Chris [Mueller] – a great goal. The players showed a lot of fight I thought. It’s really rough for them because I thought we deserved a little bit more than we’re getting at the moment. On their second goal, I think we were a little bit lax, but overall, I thought the effort and the commitment that the guys showed was very, very good.”
On the performance of the young players:
“I thought the young guys – great credit to them. It’s an intimidating atmosphere and we wanted to see how they’d cope. I’m really pleased with how they’ve come and performed. The older guys did a great job of helping them along. I really feel for the players because I think over the course of certainly the last two games, if you look at the level of effort and the level of commitment that we’ve had in the games and the level of fight that we’ve shown – I feel as if we deserve more than what we’ve got. To get nothing from both of those games is pretty hard to swallow. And ultimately it’s results that we want so that really compounds things for us. For the players, for the level of commitment and the way they played, it’s just that little piece of quality tonight that we missed.”
On turning their focus to the next game versus Cincinnati:
“Obviously it’s a long trip back. We’ll get up early and it’s a six hour flight. For us, it’s just trying to manage that and we get back pretty late [Thursday] night. We’ll have to get some rest and recover and get ready for another tough game on Sunday.”
ORLANDO CITY MIDFIELDER BENJI MICHEL
On his first MLS start:
“To be honest, at first I felt nervous, but then as the game went on I felt confidence.”
On his performance:
“I felt I did well. I have been staying ready waiting for my opportunity. The guys have been helping me build my confidence so whenever I play, whenever the time comes for the call up I’ll be ready, so I feel like I did well.”
On your thoughts on the team’s performance:
“You know, a little bit unlucky on the goals, but I felt like we fought hard, we didn’t give up till the final whistle.”
ORLANDO CITY MIDFIELDER DILLON POWERS
On his performance:
“It was fun to be out there again especially with that group in particular. I have tried to maintain a high level in training all year to be ready for this opportunity. Unfortunately, I thought we had some good spells but I think we need to start getting results here.”
On his veteran leadership for the younger players:
“You know I try to encourage guys especially in the harder moments. There are always moments in games when you are under it a little bit, when the team has a lot of possession. I think in those moments it’s easy to lose your head a little bit. So I think I try to just keep the group positive and encouraged and just through my play.”
On the team’s performance:
“Again, I think we have had another good team performance and we have had good performances all year, but I think we need to really get serious with ourselves and start to really commit to results rather than just performances. At the end of the day that is what matters and that is what this is all about. We are happy to play good football but at the end of the day we need to win games.”