Lights FC Head Coach Dennis Sanchez
On takeaways from tonight’s home opener…
We learned a lot from last week to this week, too, right? So, look, I think that what with the ball tonight, we’ve progressed a lot, especially from last week in terms of how we want to play. Again, possession with purpose: the chance creations that we had. But, we also can’t be naive to the other aspects of the game. I think that any time you go down early in games, it’s hard to come back. But, I think if we can fix a couple of things, just offensively with our mentalities. You saw a team that was pretty direct and a lot of their actions, right – so how do we cope with that? How do we deal better with second balls? There are just little details that we need more time with the group with. So overall, though, I told the guys to hold their heads high: a lot of progress from last week and that’s going to continue to be the case.
I want to keep this spirit high. It’s still very early, you can see that we’re bringing in new players constantly so and those guys are coming in and making a difference. So I think overall …yes, we want to we want to win every time we step on the field. But there’s been progress and steps forward from last week to this week.
On several positive performances of note…
I think between Coleman [Gannon] and JC [Ngando], Edison [Azcona[, you can see that there’s guys that have football in them, right? A lot of these times we have faced two man-marking midfielders now two man oriented midfielders basically man marking our guys. And so how can they create space? How can they still have fluidity between those three, but I think that not only Coleman, but I thought JC and Edison were a lot more involved tonight. And look, we want to be a team that plays to the middle. So we need those guys, again, to be brave, find the ball and really dictate the game.
On what he saw in the second half…
Yeah, I mean, look, the message at halftime was don’t lose discipline. Don’t lose our process and identity. When you go down in games… it can become chaotic, you lose sight of kind of what you’re out there doing. So I thought that they, outside of maybe the moment on the third goal, I thought that we were relatively good control. But yeah, we keep going.
On the arrival of Riki Alba this week…
We’ve done I think a good job of bringing in players that are going to compete. We want that across the board. Riki’s a guy that has played at a high level, you can see not only his ability to you know, come inside and be a link player for us. But also to arrive and score a goal. So, look, Khori [Bennett] has done well for us too, but there’s gonna be good competition between the both of them.
Lights FC Forward Riki Alba
On joining the club midweek and scoring in his debut…
Well, like you said, it’s been a hectic week I came on Tuesday, late – straight to a photoshoot, and then of course with jet lag…so I’ve been taking it easy this week. So yeah, it’s been a good start for me personally, but unfortunately we did not get three points today.
On the challenge of quickly getting acquainted with new teammates before a match several days later…
Well, it’s hard, but we speak the same language like football is a language and also, of course, it will get better with time. For me, I’ve been in the game long so I know that you just have to go step by step and just doing it easy at the start and then of course with the time I will get to know the boys better and we will better chemistry
On positives the club is able to take away from the performance…
Yeah, I guess the whole second half was good; we dominated with the ball. We created chances and half chances and yeah, I guess the whole second half was good.
Lights FC Midfielder Edison Azcona
On gaining perspective in the loss…
We made mistakes that costed us goals that we will obviously work to correct and not allowing in upcoming games. But, I feel like that second half especially we completely dominated you know, we found a lot of chances to go we got unlucky on some that didn’t want to go in. I think overall in the game too I think we had more possession we controlled the ball well, and we just have to finish little better like attacking what was kind of the message at halftime we
On the message in the locker room at halftime…
That with those mistakes that cost us goals or like say first and second balls, we have to be more intense, more aggressive.
On the addition of Riki Alba…
I definitely enjoyed playing with him because when I played with him with the [Dominican Republic] National Team, we had a very similar goal like that — taking it down the wing, crossing it and him finding the back post. I think he’s good holding up the ball, somebody that can also run behind the defenders for crosses and look for goals. Great at finishing; and I’m happy he’s here.
