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NEW YORK RED BULLS MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 19, 2016

Jesse Marsch

Harrison, New Jersey

New York Red Bulls - 2, Seattle - 0

Q. You come back from a break and still manage to maintain the momentum. How pleased are you with that performance?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, wasn't our best to be honest, but you have to credit Seattle that they came in here and they decided they were going to try and play. They did a good job, especially in the first half of at moments putting us on our heels. T.

Here's a lot of pride right now in the group to get shutouts and to prevent goals from going in. So Connor sliding; all of our backs are sliding around; Dax and Felipe are running back; on-set pieces you see our guys making big, desperate plays. Luis is doing a good job of keeping everybody tuned in, surveying, making saves, being so solid.

So that's going to be a key for us moving forward here is we've got to continue to find ways to get clean sheets and not give goals away.

Q. Sometimes a player can feed off his head coach's confidence in him. Is that what's going on here with Grella?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't want to take credit for Mike, because I think Mike's just gotten himself going as the season's gone on and he's gotten sharper and sharper and more confident.

The thing with Mike is always getting the balance right of when to play simple and when to do special things, and clearly, when he gets that balance right, he's very difficult to deal with.

And I thought the third one was going in, the one that went just wide. But right now, he's sharp, he's been really good. All of our attacking guys have been really sharp.

So you know, right now, on both sides of the ball, we feel like we've got a lot of options and we're going to have to call on a lot of them with a busy week.

Q. You had Sasha come out in the 60th. Was that something you saw, because it was a tactical switch, Collin went in, you went five-man back.
JESSE MARSCH: Once again, we were thinking about going to a five-man back when it was 1-0 and once it goes 2-0, now you're thinking, all right, who do you take often field when you go to five, and then hopefully conserve that person a little bit for potentially Wednesday and then Saturday.

I think Sasha pushed hard in Rochester, played 90 minutes, so it made sense to get him off and see if we can get him recovered and regenerated and throw him back out there on Wednesday.

Q. First, this game against Seattle, it felt like they play the same way you play. You're both pressing; you're both attacking. Did you feel this was going to be a great challenge when they came over here tonight?
JESSE MARSCH: Well, again, I have to, I think Seattle played really well. Of all the games I've seen them play this year, this was one of their best. They put us on our heels. I thought we could have done better if we had pressed together at moments and picked off more balls, but they were clever, they were good on the ball and they had good movements and spaced themselves well and pulled us apart.

We haven't had many teams do that here at Red Bull Arena, so that was -- you know, that was something that we'll look at and continue to think about how we can improve upon that but I'll give Seattle credit.

Q. You're now one point behind Philadelphia in the standings after the start that you had, and now you're on this big unbeaten streak right now. How does it feel for yourself and for the guys right now?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, we've rebounded really well. I think we were going to use the downtime to motivate us and to make us clear on what it was going to take to be successful.

I think that that has been the case, but it's still ongoing. It doesn't stop. You have to continue to push. You can't stop and be too proud of yourself because that's when the next slip-up will come. We have to stay focused.

It's a really hard week. I mean, I don't know how the league can arrange a week like this for us. I put a lot on them in the scheduling that this was really poor, really poor. Especially now with travel between Salt Lake and Columbus; it's the worst combination of Sunday-Wednesday-Saturday you could possibly have.

Not happy about it. But whatever. We have to suck it up and figure out a way to put a team out on Wednesday to go after the game.

Q. Just to continue on that a little bit, with the rotation, how satisfying is it to rotate your players once again and get another clean sheet, and for how you're going to approach the next two games with the road trip?
JESSE MARSCH: We said at the beginning of the year that we believed in our roster and we wanted it to be the type of thing where we could rotate; we could rotate tactics at time, and rotate players at time. And a lot of it was due to matchups and who we would be playing against.

And so, you know, I mean, listen, that wasn't an easy thing to do to not put AurÃ©lien in the lineup tonight, but we thought that Chris matched up really well against Jordan Morris and his speed. Chris has done a really good job for us, so we've gotten to the point to where we rely on him not just at right back but at center back.

In the end, I think Chris was a big piece of us preventing goals from going in tonight. And having AurÃ©lien come in off the bench was a big plus, too.

Q. When we talk about attackers, we always talk about consistency. Did you have any concerns with Mike going into the season, given the way it started and all that kind of thing that maybe the form wouldn't carry over from this campaign?
JESSE MARSCH: No. There was talk about Brad early in the year. There was talk about Mike, Lloyd, Sasha. We weren't scoring a lot of goals. There was questions.

But I know these guys. I know what they are about. I watch them every day. They are great men. They are very good players. They give everything they have and it was just a matter of like redefining certain things and really now, you know, getting them going to the point where now when they step on the field, they are clear and they are confident. So clearly when you look at Mike right now, that's the case.

Q. There's a good chunk in the middle portion of the game where Seattle had a huge amount of chances and it seemed like play was always on your end but the deep fence always seemed to come up huge. How has your defense been able to play so well over the course of the last four games?
JESSE MARSCH: Well, we're talking about confidence from some of the attacking players; there's a lot of confidence in the defending group right now and a lot of it comes from pure effort, a lot of guys, throwing themselves around, running back at top speeds, trying to cut down space.

If one guy gets beat, the next guy is alert to help him deal with the next situation and now total commitment. That's led to confidence and now where before, it was always waiting for a goal to happen; now it's waiting for a guy to make a play to prevent goals. That momentum has been really good for us.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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