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NEW YORK RED BULLS MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 23, 2019

Chris Armas

Harrison, New Jersey

New York Red Bulls - 0, Orlando City - 1

Q. Looked a little haphazard, was more connected. I don't know what happened out there. Why did that happen?
CHRIS ARMAS: There's a lot that goes into the night. You know, what kept us from getting a rhythm and the sharpness and a real grasp in the game. We thrive on making the game fast. Orlando tried to so things down. You could see it. There was different instances and injuries that happened in the first half that disrupted our rhythm. But we were slow on throwing (ph) there was just so many things.

We would have done ourselves a bigger favor if we were, if we knew that second balls would be a big thing on the night. Sometimes when we play directs, we knew that they would play directs, looking to get behind, the big diagonals that they were hitting. This is all about second balls and if you're on the winning end of those, you get more opportunities to maybe catch them.

So yeah, there was a number of things, but yeah, we feel like we left points out there for sure and then on the night, we're not too pleased at that performance.

Q. Just a quick update. How is Connor doing?
CHRIS ARMAS: Connor's all right. Took a knock to the quad and it's done for a bit. He's doing all right.

Q. Along those lines, Connor goes down, you bring Omir in, and Alex flies back and Omir goes down late. It just seems like it was one thing after another injury-wise. I'd imagine, frustration for you?
CHRIS ARMAS: Yeah, look, I actually thought when -- yeah, it's part of the game. Did a pretty good job I would say, and we've used him in that position before so we felt comfortable going that route. When Omir came to the game, we thought he almost gave the game an injection of what he needed, some energy and quality and immediately changed things.

So you could say that was a positive late in the game, thinking about pushing it, and he would have been a factor and you have to take him off. That's part of it. Strange the way it all came together, but that's part of it. It wasn't -- it wasn't -- that certainly wasn't a major factor in the result.

Q. You talked about not getting second balls. Why were you not able to win those second balls?
CHRIS ARMAS: Again, there's probably so many little things that go into winning a second ball. You know, reading where it's going to go; are you anticipating; are you connected in a way; anything structurally and tactically; are you coming back into the game with your attackers when it's on our end.

When our centerback is heading the ball, are you heading the ball directly to the other team, or is it kind of in the balance and going their way.

It's really a mentality sometimes to really sniff a play out, think about where it's going to go, get an early read and just commit yourself physically, mentally, with everything to, that that's an important piece of it, and we thought we let ourselves down with that. That's only one part of it for sure. But with us, it's a big part. It shows that we're connected and the structure of things that are in place.

Q. Is that a concern to you?
CHRIS ARMAS: No, listen, it's not concerning because again, there's a majority of those that just fall the other team's way or they end up putting a lot into things. Yeah, it's not a real concern. Coming out of this game, there's no real concerns. We know in different stretches this year we've played really well and we had some stretches where we haven't played that great today.

As a whole, we couldn't get a real grasp on it. As always, we'll look hard, and we'll look very hard -- we look hard when we win, so when we don't win and we're not happy with the performance, we'll look at every little thing and get back to work.

Q. It's difficult for team to win here. How much credit do you give to Orlando in winning here?
CHRIS ARMAS: It's not an easy building to win for opposition. They get a lot of credit to come here and do what not a lot of teams have done in the last five or six years.

So yeah, credit to them. They make a good play on the day. They didn't create a whole lot, maybe two shots on goal, but they made a good play. I'm happy for Sacha, too, that he had a good game.

Yeah, more so that we -- you know, it's a credit to Orlando for sure but we're more focused on that we didn't bring our good stuff on the night. We let a major opportunity in front of loyal supporter, people that come out and support us all the time, we didn't give them what they deserve.

Q. Can you speak about the physicality of the game? After the game started to slow down, both sides started to get more physical, yellow cards came out. Can you speak on that a little bit?
CHRIS ARMAS: The one after the game is to Luis, and it's for Orlando wasting time, which they did all night. So you can see that it was a deliberate attempt to slow the game down and they were taking time, which you know, as a league, I don't think we want this to look that way, and it's being addressed.

It's hard to manage that, though, without dishing out yellow cards. That's frustrating that we're losing, we lost. That's frustration, I forget which player it is, he picked the ball up at the end and threw the ball away and they are saying that's an easy yellow card, and they are right, according to what the league has said they are going to crack down on. We talked internally with the league; we want to get this stuff right.

But listen, there's frustration from bigger reasons than that. I want to make a clear statement here that it wasn't the referees. It wasn't that they slowed the game. The main thing is we didn't play that great, and that frustrated our guys. It's just a little bit frustrating that we couldn't get the real rhythm, and of course, the little bit of the stoppages and the fouls, which, I mean, our guy got kicked in the face, our guy got fouled -- I don't remember us fouling him too recklessly.

Q. Amro Tarek, could you comment on his performance?
CHRIS ARMAS: Amro had a good game. I thought he really had a good game and gave us a lot of what we needed. When we have the ball up the field, you know, he's putting out fires. He's playing on the attackers. He was tuned in and alert. He was up for the challenge tonight. I thought he filled in admirably tonight.

He played against Columbus in Columbus, and he's been training well and he's been playing well, so it's good to see him have an athletic pretty solid performance on the back line.

Q. How do you move forward for Chicago?
CHRIS ARMAS: It's easy. Easy. I mean, again, we -- this is what we do for a living. We want every game to go our way. We understand we can't just put the jerseys on in our home building and go out there and think it's going to happen.

We have to earn it every single time, and reset every single time. We know that.

So how do you move on from a performance that wasn't so great? You get back to work. We won't harp on this. There's little things in there. We can be sharper. We can all be better on the night. The staff and the players, we can be better.

We come in Monday and we come ready to work, and with a humility and knowing we can get better. Knowing we can get better, the training reflects that, and we continue, really, to hold each other accountable, and the players to each other and that's it. We'll be ready to fly come next weekend in Chicago.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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