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NEW YORK RED BULLS MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 28, 2016

Jesse Marsch

Harrison, New Jersey

New York Red Bulls, 1 - New England Revolution, 0

Q. Jesse, maybe not the best all around team performance, but what does it say about your guys to be able to just grind out and get a goal at home and keep the unbeaten streak going?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, I agree with the fact that we had a lot of good performances tonight, and I thought it was pretty clean and pretty professional. And New England playing their third game in a week, or third game in nine days or whatever, they put a lot into it in the second half. They were quite good. They were a little bit unlucky not to find a good chance or a goal.

But you did feel like, after the performance in the first half, that if we could come out and just stay focused and concentrated on the tactics and on pushing the game, that the goal was going to come, and even if the second one didn't come, that we were going to be able to close it out.

So, yeah, overall, good performance from a lot of guys.

Q. I know his name wasn't on the box score for the goal, but Alex Muyl did a lot in terms of the setup to get the ball out, get the shot. Probably his most complete performance this year in the final third?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, Alex has done so many things to establish himself with our team and to make us good. That's what we've been telling him. You do a million things in the game to make us good -- the ground you cover, the way you compete, the battles you win in your part of the field. It's amazing. It's amazing. And then we're just continuing to challenge him, to slow down in certain moments.

When he's in and around the goal in the attacking third, could he just have a little bit more poise and put together more quality plays? And I thought that was a step forward for him today.

Now moving forward, that's the key. Without taking your foot off the pedal, without him taking his foot off the pedal in terms of the pure work rate he puts in, can he still find times to just put a few more attacking plays together that can lead to more chances and more goals.

Q. You guys usually create a ton of chances here every game at home. Today New England seemed to do a pretty decent job of limiting the chances. What do you think they were able to do to do that? What does it say when Bradley doesn't get many looks, but his first good one when he hits it?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, I think that New England has made an emphasis within their team that they want to give up fewer goals and they want to be harder to play against on the defensive end. So I think a lot of it was their tactical awareness and then their pure effort in some of these defensive plays and their edge.

They also, by sitting Koffie a little bit deeper and then also having Caldwell and Rowe help out at different times, meant that their block of seven was really trying to close down space.

That being said, if we're a little bit sharper in the first half, without discrediting New England, I think that there were plenty of opportunities there for us to go up a goal and then maybe expand on it.

But regardless, it was a big result, an important result, and it keeps us in good shape in the table and keeps our momentum moving forward. You look at result-wise where we're at after our 1-6 start, the team's been in a good way for a while and been pushing hard, been pretty clear. I think in many ways we're as good as we've been in my year-plus here.

So I think the ability for us to keep our foot on the pedal and look forward and know that we're a good team and now find ways to keep pushing to get results every day will determine our success at the end of the year.

Q. [No microphone]?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, it's amazing to me that Brad doesn't get discussed more in the MVP race. Obviously, there are some sexy names out there, in terms of great players in our league and guys that are having good years, but especially, again, if you look after the first seven games, if you look at the way Brad's played for the last 20 games, I don't think there's been anyone in the league that's been better.

And then his -- yeah, you're right. I keep trying to challenge him to have the cutthroat mentality and all he needs is one chance and to make big plays, and I think he's really done a good job with that. Brad's been key. I love the fact that we have the counter up there now. It's pretty sweet. That every time he scores -- I don't know how many numbers they have back there, but they should have quite a few because it's going to keep coming.

Q. Jesse, just talk about Luis, another solid performance in net. Were you a little worried because in the first half New England really -- they didn't seem to put anything together in the first half and didn't really look busy, but then second half they just exploded.
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, well, I think the one blip on the day for us is that we had a slow start to the second half, and we knew that -- we felt strongly that second half we were going to be able to put together another good half and create chances, but we wanted to make sure we limited them, and if we go down a goal, it makes the game exponentially more difficult.

So the tough start was a little concerning, but we weathered it. They threw a lot at us at the beginning, and, again, got to give them credit, but in the end -- you know, listen, with Luis back in the goal, it's a really comforting position to be in as a coach to know that you have a reliable guy that's going to do everything he can within his power to make saves, clean sheets, be available, compete, lead. I mean, this club is incredibly lucky to have a guy like Luis Robles.

Q. He beat me to the punch with Bradley and the MVP, but what do you think he needs to do to enter the conversation a little bit more on a league-wide perspective?
JESSE MARSCH: Just keep doing what he's doing. You can't ignore the fact he scores goals, he works his butt off, he's one of the best players in every game he plays in. There's no forward in the league that I think puts together as many complete performances as Brad does.

And then to be able to have the energy to score goals and be lethal around the goal and be dangerous in the way he moves, it's unique, right? It's real special. He's a special player.

So I would hope that -- you know, the one thing I'll say is I know when teams play against us, they have a lot of respect for Brad. I know they game plan for him. I know they try to limit him. I know they try to be physical on him because that's one thing they think they can gain an edge with. But Brad's ability to not get frustrated, to stay focused on the game, to wait for opportunities, to meet at the tactics of what we want him to do, it's all really impressive.

Again, another guy that -- I think that more and more people are going to start to be talking about him in the MVP race.

Q. Coach, you mentioned before the unbeaten streak now at nine. Does it feel like you guys are riding on momentum at this point? Does it feel like it's kind of pushing it a little?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, it's been like this for a while now. It's been a few months where the team's felt like we're in a good way.

But we know that. We've got that kind of in the back pocket of our mentality, but the key is to not be satisfied. Right now I think the group is realistic in the sense that they know, in order to get to some goals that we've all tried to set for ourselves in a big way, that we can't ever be satisfied, that nothing's good enough. We appreciate each other. We appreciate the group we have. I think we all feel strongly about so many things about being at this club and being on this team and playing for this team.

I keep saying that, in order to honor what a great club this is, we have to push every day to do everything we can to now raise the -- to have the ultimate goals.

Q. Jesse, it was only a couple months ago that Alex made his debut for you guys, and now he's such a large role with this team. Did you expect him to be such a key player this late in the season? And are you surprised by his professionalism being where it is?
JESSE MARSCH: I watched him a lot in college. So Georgetown played Akron this past week, so the college season's back at it again. We've got a bunch of homegrown players out there. So we're trying to keep tabs on all of them. And I knew last year that watching Georgetown was going to be really important for evaluating where our homegrown players at that school are at.

When I watched Alex last year, I was incredibly impressed with just about everything from his mentality to his reactions to his quality to his ability to score goals to his competitiveness. So I was really hopeful that, when we got him here, that he would be a perfect fit.

He had a slow start because right before preseason he got hurt, so he didn't really get himself going much. But over time, where it was with the USL team or with our first group, you could see that he was getting better and better and that everybody understood that this was a young guy who, when he was on your team, he was going to do everything he could to help your team win on the day, whether that's in training or USL games or MLS games.

So the fact that he's contributed so much from a minutes perspective has been a little bit of a surprise. I think that he's ahead of where we thought he was, but you could see he had something in him. He had something that made him different and something that frankly fit the way we do things really well. So excited about his future here.

Q. Over the last year, there's been a lot of rotating cast of characters throughout the back line through injuries and call-ups and what have you. Since bringing in Aurelien and getting Ronald healthy, how important is it to have those two really solidify, and what can you say about that pairing?
JESSE MARSCH: I think those two have been a good pairing, and they enjoy playing with each other. It's fair enough to talk about those guys, but I think Damien is going to continue -- he should be back this week, and I think Perrinelle, Damien Perrinelle is going to continue to help us.

I think their clarity of how they want to play on their tactics, their movement on the back line, I think we -- in this last stretch since the 9 games and 11 games overall, the back line has been very organized. We've worked on it a lot. We've looked at video a lot. We've challenged them to be on the same page and communicate in the right ways and understand how to play with each other.

Now that we have Kemar back, and even though we lost Connor, which is a big loss, Chris Duvall had his best performance of the year. That's promising for him at right back for the future. So you start to feel that back line is coming together in the right way.

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