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NEW YORK RED BULLS MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 25, 2017

Jesse Marsch

Harrison, New Jersey

Q. Jesse, obviously it wasn't a bad match, but not having Sacha due to international duty, it looked like it was a little bit challenging out there for the guys on the offensive end?
JESSE MARSCH: Well, I mean, listen, Sacha's a huge player for us in terms of creating chances, but we had plenty of chances. We had plenty of chances. Like I said last year, we're going to come together, we're going to score goals. It's taking a little bit of time, but we all know what we have here and that it's going to come together.

So, I could go back and say that again. Listen, it would have been nice to get a win tonight and three points because it continues to give us time to feel good, and feel positive energy with everything coming together, and knowing that it will come around eventually. We didn't manage to do that, but I still feel like there's a lot of good performances on the day.

I feel like Connor Lade came in and for 60 minutes was pretty much our best player. Played very well. I thought Aaron long played really well. Kemar Lawrence comes back and does fairly well. Tyler Adams, thought Tyler Adams was very good, and Felipe's been very good all year.

So there are still plenty of positives to take away from it. It's just you feel like you let two points slip away.

Q. Another game where you started in the four-two-two-two, and ended up in the four-two-three-one. Can you talk about how come you don't stick with the four-two-three-one at the beginning of the match, considering how many more chances you got in the second half tonight or today?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, well, I feel, listen, in the Atlanta game, we didn't go to three. We stayed with two the whole match, and then some of these other games, we feel like given what the game is like, teams are making decisions to not allow us to not play. So Salt Lake on the day says we're just going to kick the ball up the field every time.

What's that do? That means some of our pressure and our pressure tactics don't ever get rewarded because it's not part of the game. Then it becomes often a battle of second balls, and then if we don't feel like our two strikers are doing enough to come underneath to start to pick up balls, then the way to deal with that is to maybe put another one in there. Then in addition, if now we're trying to break things down and we're not getting Sacha on the ball enough. Or in this game, we feel like we need one more guy that in the final third can piece together a play. If on the day it's Felipe, then that will be a tactical adjustment we can make.

There will be games we start with three, I promise you that. But it's about now trying to figure out given the day and given our personal, and what we're working on and what we're working through, what we think is the best. Not getting the result tonight or the three-points for me has nothing to do with two or three. It has to do with just now not taking our advantages well enough.

Q. Coach, what are your thoughts on being one of the six teams to play a game during an international break?
JESSE MARSCH: I don't like it. I don't understand it. These are things for you two ask the league. There's often things that I don't quite get. But in the end, it's okay because it gives us a rhythm right now of playing games, but, yeah, I'd much rather have both teams be able to have their full complement of players.

Q. In having given the starting nod to Tyler Adams, what do you think he brings to the midfield as opposed to Sean Davis?
JESSE MARSCH: I won't compare the two. I'll just talk about Tyler, okay? And I'll say that Tyler is tenacious in there. He's aggressive. He's confident on the ball. He's still, I think, that's the thing that he's still developing is the savviness and sense of how to move around with the game and set plays up in front of him. But I thought overall that was pretty good tonight. He wins his duels. He's fast in there, he covers ground, he pressures well, he breaks up plays, and he's a competitor. So, I mean, I could go on because we think so highly of him, and know that it's only a matter of him getting repetition for him to continue to elevate his status within the team and continue to develop as a player.

Q. Two questions, one, how cynical do you think Real Salt Lake became in the second half? They had three yellows in five minutes, and we don't see that every day. And could you elaborate on why you decided to start Connor Lade at right back? What did you see in training that you said, hey, this is the time.
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, so the first part is this is not a new tactic of playing the Red Bulls, okay? Don't allow their pressure, foul them when we get on the counter, break up their play when they have the ball, make it hard on their good attacking players. You know, we've tried to alert Pro and the League that this is -- sorry, and then slow the game down almost obnoxiously.

We've tried to make that clear to Pro and to the League that this is a tactic and it's not good for the League. If you want to watch entertaining football, then when a team fouls or gets a throw in or goal kick and takes 30 seconds every time, nobody pays money to see that, okay? In an entertainment business, nobody pays money to see that. But it took halftime -- I mean, we're reminding the fourth official, reminding the fourth official, trying to get the word out to the first official. Then even when they started the second half, he didn't want to do it until like the 60th minute.

What was the second question?

Connor, listen, what you see with him is just his energy and will is so big. You know what I mean? He will always get judged for his size, but he'll never get judged for his heart, and I think that's truly what makes him a big player. So, as much as we knew he wasn't 90 minutes fit, we wanted him on the field. We want to get him going.

I think we've been patient enough. So I've been challenging our medical staff because they've asked me to be patient, and I keep telling them that I'm impatient. So it was time to get Connor going, and I thought he was fantastic. I thought in the first half, he was our best player. He got a little fatigued in the second half, but we're going to continue to build on that performance for him.

Q. Considering this is a very weak Real team, do you feel like the tie feels more like a loss?
JESSE MARSCH: Well, I mean, I don't want to reference Salt Lake, but I'll say anytime we don't get three points at home, we're disappointed, because we've been a very good team here at home for quite some time now. We like to put on a show for our fans. We like to be very aggressive at home and get our points. So that part is always a disappointment. The guys walked off the field like it was a loss, and I kind of had to remind them in the locker room like, come on, man, it's the beginning of the year. We've got things to work on. But there are a lot of positives from that performance that we can build on and continue to move forward.

One of the things I'm challenging them is that we look like two different teams in the first half and the second half, right? So sometimes at halftime when they come in, I'm trying to encourage them to get themselves going, and it's almost like from the first whistle in the second half they show more confidence, they show more urgency, they show more belief, and they come out and look more like us.

I feel like if we've had six games where we've played so far, if we would have played in the first half like we played in the second half in each one of those games, we'd have six positive results along the way. So, you know, we're a new team here. We've got some younger guys on the field. We're encouraging them to keep themselves going. But I promise you, this team will get better as the year goes on.

Q. You're talking about formations. Would you ever consider three-four-three, because looking at that roster it seems like something you might do pretty well?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, we consider a lot of formations. We'd consider. Yeah, we have a lot of good players on this roster. We like, right now, to work on our pressing tactics and our movement, ball movement when we have two strikers. We think we have really good potential players to play up there. When Sacha's here, obviously, trying to figure out how to maximize the most out of him and both little wider spot and the spot underneath is important. Sometimes playing him as a second striker.

So, listen, we've played five in the back before. We've played a lot of formations since I've been here. But the tactics are really just nuances on roles and what's most important is playing the way we want to play.

Q. Going back to the comparative slow starts back to the Champions League up to now, in your mind, is that just not coming out with the right mentality in the first half? Is it you guys think you're well conditioned and wear people out in the second? In your mind, what do you attribute that to?
JESSE MARSCH: I put it almost squarely on confidence from the starting to out and play the way we want to play. And not be concerned about if we're going to make a bad play or if something's going to go wrong. But be more focused on make things happen that are right.

With young players, when they start elevating themselves within a team, it's normal to have a little bit of anxiety, especially when the game gets started and they don't want to make a mistake. I thought our team got rolling, and Luis maybe made a play out of the back, and then all of a sudden maybe Damien lost the ball, and all of a sudden tension grew within our team.

So, again, we're in the beginning stages of the season. Not everything's going to be perfect. We'll look from our mistakes. But I'm trying to get them to go out on the field and really just go after things and play the way we want to play, knowing that that will make positive things happen and not worry about the negative things.

Is that clear? Am I clear? Maybe I should -- can we play that tape in the locker room?

Q. Can you talk about Mike Grella, what's going on with his leg, and if it's the same leg?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, it's the same issue with Mike. He's going to have three to four weeks off because we're going to try some treatments with it and hope that we can -- it's his knee. It's like his knee/quad muscle. So we're trying to try some treatments there to see if we can solve some of the pain issues he's having. And we're hopeful that it means there will be nothing more that needs to happen, so it's probably going to take three to four weeks.

Q. So he has not had surgery?
JESSE MARSCH: No, he has not had a second surgery. He's having treatments right now.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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