Omar Gonzalez is back to his day job as a defender for the Galaxy, but after Tuesday’s training session, he met with the media to share is experiences with the U.S. in the World Cup,

Gonzalez said the team was not affected by Coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s pre-tournament assertion that “We cannot win this World Cup because we are not at that level yet.”

“I tried not to pay attention too much to the media and how they can take things people say and flip them and things like that,” Gonzalez said. “Would I have liked to say, ‘Yeah we can get as far as we can.’ Maybe it could have been worded differently. I think that’s all it is.

“From inside the locker room he was nothing but supportive. He was probably our biggest cheerleader. He might have said that, but when we were interacting with each other, there was no doubt that he believed that we could do it.”