NEW YORK RED BULLS MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 20, 2023

Troy Lesesne

Press Conference

Austin 1, New York Red Bulls 1

Q. Perfect technical second half, Boston gets on the board with their first shot, and that has happened multiple times when the opponent scores on their first shot of the game. Talk to us about what that did to the team and what you shared with the team at halftime?

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, look, the first half for me, you could chalk it up to being -- but we are not going to do that. We had chances to go up 2-0, 3-0, didn't take them. And then we don't defend well on a really good attack, a really good attack and we don't have our rest defense in the right order to counter-press. So they just play in space, and one silly moment like that allows them to have a set piece and now we still have an opportunity to defend it, and we didn't do that.

So we have ourselves to look at and be accountable for and that's exactly what we are going to do.

Q. How is Dante right now? Obviously he had that nasty spill after he scored. Secondly, when you subbed in Hurtado, how important was it for him to try to get that second goal that you really needed in this one?

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, first off, for Dante, I don't know the exact extent of the injuries. He's being evaluated right now and hoping obviously for him that he comes through and gets a check with the doctors and gets the scan, I think it's on his back, and everything hopefully will be fine. I don't have information other than right now.

I was happy to get Jorge on. He's talented and shows well in training. He's still only a few weeks in with us and he definitely has something, and we know we need to score goals. So it's okay to give a young player that's new to the group an opportunity. He's had a couple with us so far. But it's also as a comment on talent, it's not fair to put the spotlight on him and say that's why the second goal didn't come in this game.

I think valuable minutes for him, and we are going to look to have our guys get involved again, and many of them, I hope, this weekend versus D.C. United.

Q. They fought well but just wasn't there. What do you see after a match like that? Just wasn't enough and the second goal wasn't there.

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, stop banging your heads. That might be a really valuable point. The way that things shook out tonight results-wise, for the most part it wasn't the end of our season, and we have five games left. Don't hang your heads. We have to do more, and I think we did more tonight and we created more tonight and we have to finish. We can't give up these simple chances.

Q. Could we possibly see Juan Mina this week?

TROY LESESNE: He just had his first training session today. A big part is for him to get assimilated, similar to what I said about Jorge, and also, we want to make sure when we bring players in, we bring them in at the right speed.

But I like what I saw today in training with the second team. We'll see how he continues to progress.

Q. When we spoke to you earlier before the game -- what are some things you would have liked to see different tonight?

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, I can't say it enough. I'd say the first half, it was there for us, and we did an unbelievable job starting the game in the right fashion, score early, and then the next goal needs to come and we created chances for that and we just have to finish. You think of two or three opportunities inside the box, and then to finish; but again, the opportunity that we gave up is not acceptable, and really, it's the difference in the game.

So these are the things I have to continue to reiterate and the things that we are going to focus on going into D.C.

Q. I want to talk about D.C. for a minute. You guys have won once away from Red Bull Arena this year in the League. What has been missing on the road? Because a point in D.C., while nice, is not --

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, we absolutely need all three of them. They are in a position where they could get a tremendous advantage, where they are in the standings if they get all three. And their form has been very good at home.

For us, I would say on the road, it's a little bit of the same conversation as tonight. I think we need to be able to score the first goal and then we need to be able to look for the next moment and not have any kind of complacency.

I don't think we displayed complacency tonight, but there's an edge about you, when you get into these moments and you can capitalize and get the next big moment. And I think that's something you really need to take care of on the road and sometimes the next big moment is making a defensive play in your own half to not allow the team to counter and get a corner kick.

Sounds like a broken record, I know, but these are things we have to address and D.C. United is going to pose these same problems for us, there's no doubt about it.

Q. The first half, probably one of the best first halves you've had all season, the entire year. Can you talk about what changed during training up to this point? Did you try anything different? And early on, we saw probably one of the best chances in the game in the first five minutes. What did you see and did you see anything to him at halftime?

TROY LESESNE: Yeah, I'll answer these questions. Can be relieved by that.

I didn't need to say a lot tonight to encourage the group to take risks or be a little bit brave to get into these final third moments, and you could see that, like you said, right out of the gates. That's why I will I can't say is in the game because he has that type of pace and he has that type of dynamic. We've see that a few times this year.

If you think about the goal we scored against Charlotte, it's really down to him being put in behind and creating that moment for Dante. We have to continue to get him in these positions. The amount of forward runs that he makes on the night is really impressive, and I think he's developed that really good way for us this year. I know goals are coming for him.

But truly, I really didn't have to say much in the prematch. We didn't have a lot of time necessarily in training to work on anything different. Really, tonight was just about trying to take risks, trying to be more brave, and we did that. We did that. But we need to see the final product at the end of that risk and bravery.

Q. You go to Fernandez off the bench. Was there a specific reason and not going to Hurtado or Barlow?

TROY LESESNE: Definitely, it's a good question. Welcome to the coaching staff. These are things we talk about and did talk about. That's the decision that we made. I think it was a good decision, though. He was our leading goal scorer this year. He had an argument to start tonight, that's for sure.

Really taking him off at the end, I told him it was down to a matter of that's going to be a situation where we are looking to get balls in the box which we did not do enough of, what he and some of the players are doing on the team. But yeah, that was part of it, the thought process.