MLS IS BACK TOURNAMENT MEDIA DAY

July 7, 2020

Peter Vermes

Q. You are going to kick off this tournament against Minnesota United on July 12th at 8:00 PM. How are you getting your team prepared for that game?

PETER VERMES: Well, it's been a long preparation, actually, from individual workouts to now full team training and obviously coming down here, it's been quite a challenge in so many ways.

But you know, I have to commend our players. They have been very disciplined. Great work ethic. Staff has been tremendous. They have dealt with a lot of different things that are new and unprecedented, and yeah, just I lot of newness, and so I think everybody has dealt with it really well. The guys have worked hard. Obviously we are not completely 90 minutes game form, but I'm not sure how many teams are.

And so I think that we are looking forward to playing somebody other than ourselves. We have been training against each other for quite some time now. Yeah, I think the guys are motivated to start the games and start the tournament.

Q. You say your players are motivated to start this tournament, but how do you see and what do you expect about Mexican striker Pulido and the Mexican players who are having their first season in this system and the season was stopped because of the pandemic?

PETER VERMES: Yeah, sure. This is how I would phrase it. Alan is an incredible professional. I had an idea in my head of how Alan would fit into our team. He has surpassed all my expectations. He is a tremendous person, great character. Team guy all the way. His soccer qualities, I had a very good idea how they would fit into our team, and I have been amazed at how much better that in my mind's eye I thought he was going to fit in; he has actually fit in tremendously.

His work ethic is incredible. His desire to win, again, very high-level. So we are very lucky to have him. He's a great, great addition to our team and an incredible job example for a lot of players in our team, and also for the young ones, especially.

I feel that he is very motivated and that he is very close to his form before we stopped because of COVID-19. He's very close in regards to his fitness and everything else, and so I hope that he gets back to that same type of form very, very quickly.

Q. What's the mood on your team; the nerves, if there are any, about what's going on with Dallas and Nashville? Even your sense walking around the halls of the hotel, what's it like?

PETER VERMES: Very honestly, I've told the guys since we started individual workouts that, you know, this was going to be up to us to make sure that we were going to be very responsible and disciplined, both players and staff, and the smart thing would be is if we could only extend ourselves to essential-type areas in and around town, grocery store, places such as that.

And then also we're really responsible the people we kind of associated ourselves with, basically not knowing where they have been and what they have been doing.

Up until now, our guys have been very disciplined. We talked before we came down here that the important aspect was as much as we are coming into a bubble, that we are going to have to create our own bubble with our 45-person delegation.

And so again, our guys up till now have been very disciplined. We've tested easily over 1,500 to 2,000 tests up until now. We've had all negatives. We had one unconfirmed false positive which became a false positive based on our protocol. We continue to do so, and we have also tried to just keep ourselves contained within our team and that's it.

Fully expect that people are going to get COVID, but we can do our best to try to counteract that by being responsible to ourselves and our team.

Q. You guys in Kansas City take a lot of care of the quality of the play. Do you see that we should expect, of course, a little lower quality in all the teams, but do you think that that should be a priority right now, or it doesn't matter that much, the quality of the play since around everything that is happening, probably safety and health of the players is more important than anything else?

PETER VERMES: Well, I think you can achieve all of it at the same time. I think it's a little unfair to expect that teams that haven't played a game for, you know, three months or more to all of a sudden be in game form and game shape.

But I also know that every team in this league, all the staffs, all the players, they have pride and they have been working hard to try to get themselves ready for not only for their first game, but all three games, and for some, even the other three games, the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the final.

What I think you will see, you will see the quality of play increase from game-to-game, because teams will get in just more of a rhythm. But I also think that, look, the league has done an excellent job in trying to create a very safe environment.

I think it's absurd to expect that they are going to be able to protect us from every single droplet that's out there. It's an invisible enemy that nobody can see and I think they have put in as many precautions as they possibly can.

So I feel, as I said earlier, I feel very comfortable from a safety aspect. I also think we all have our own individual responsibility to it, as well. It's not just the league's responsibility. It's ours, as well.

So in regards to play, I believe that we are going to try and play as close to who we are and what we want to look like on the field as we can, and I do believe that from game-to-game, we will get better and that's our objective.

I do think that you will see good quality play here, and I just think it will get better and better as the tournament goes on.

Q. Curious about your 9:00 AM game preparation. On July 22nd you'll be playing Salt Lake. How do you prepare for an early game?

PETER VERMES: First off, great question. Never have I ever coached a 9:00 AM real game. So that will be an experience. Looking forward to it in a way.

At the same time, I think we are going to obviously have to readjust how we do things. Maybe wake up a little earlier. Probably fuel the body a little differently the night before and earlier that day, and at the same time we are going to have to wake the guys up, not just earlier, but we are just going to have to wake their bodies up a different way getting ready for the game. It's not as if they are normally ready to play at 9:00 AM in the morning.

So it will be difficult, but both teams are going to have to figure it out, and try to get into, you know, our rhythm as quick as possible. It's better that it's probably the third game than it is the first game.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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