What was said following Atlanta United’s 2-1 loss at Chicago on Saturday:
GERARDO MARTINO
“I think we had the chance to strike first and didn’t take advantage of it. After that, Chicago was able to get out on a quick counter, catch us off guard and score. After that, we lost a little bit of intensity.”
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On if opponents using long balls is a result of his team pressing
“We provoke those long balls. That’s what we want to do by pressing is get teams into playing long balls. Today we pressed well, we were able to do that, but Chicago was able to play long balls that gave us problems.”
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On if the plan, no matter the score, was to play Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez
“Yes. We knew that was about the amount of minutes they wanted to play, no matter the score. We didn’t adjust for that. Josef, those are his first official minutes back, so we wanted him to play about that many. And Miguel played 75 minutes with Paraguay so we also wanted him to play about that many minutes.”
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“He looked good. He was moving well. I don’t think we saw any signs of his injury. He just needs more time.”
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“Wednesday, we’ll see, but there’s a chance that we will change so that he starts and able to play more minutes, start getting match fit, and then we will take him off in the second half.”
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On what having Martinez back, and moving other players to their natural positions, affects the team and tactics
“We have different options to go with. One option would be to go back to how we started the season with Julian playing in that holding position next to Jeff (Larentowicz), with Tito on the wing. Or, if we don’t want to break up that (Carlos) Carmona-Larentowicz pairing, we have different options.”
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On if Chicago was offsides on its first goal:
“No, neither of the players were offsides. We confirmed it. They weren’t offsides.”
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JULIAN GRESSEL
“If we go up in the game it’s a different game. We had a couple of chances to go up 2-0. That would obviously change the game.
“They were pretty opportunistic with their long balls and catching us onside. We just couldn’t finish a chance today, unfortunately.”
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On playing against Bastian Schweinsteiger
“It wasn’t too much different from a normal game. You try to focus on your own thing and try to win the game. I would have loved to beat him. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.
“Re-watching the game I’ll probably keep an eye on him and watch what he does like I always do, just to learn.”
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“I saw him and talked to him really quick.”
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“I think we have to find ways to win games. As weird as that sounds. AT this moment we are finding ways to lose games, which is not a good thing. We have to turn it around, analyze this game, figure out what we did wrong and obviously have to focus on Columbus, their weaknesses and how we can exploit them and score goals.
“We are back home. We want to score goals and win the game.”
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“It’s just him particpating in practice again. It’s nice to have him out on the field around us, and not doing his own rehab stuff. It’s not like we don’t know how he plays anymore. I think it’ll be a quick transition and he can get on the scoresheet pretty quick, I think.”
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KEVIN KRATZ
On his first start:
“There were two or there where I lost the ball too easy. A few passes to play forward. One chance to called offsides. I was hoping on my free kick right before halftime, I think I hit it pretty well, but I think Tito and Jeff were a little too late. But it’s always close with free kicks and them not trying to get into an offside position.
“I was happy I could start. It would have been better if we had taken home three points.”
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“Tito had one or two good chances in the first half. If we score there, we go into halftime 1-1. In the second half as well we had a few crosses coming in.
“We created chances. It’s not that we don’t have any chances. We need to be more consistent putting the ball into the net. There were enough chances to score. If you play away you don’t get as many chances as you get at home. It’s a tough loss.”
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