Highlights:
Notable:
*Chivas USA midfielder Gerson Mayn earned his MLS-leading fourth assist of the year on Chivas USA’s second goal.
*The shutout was the 62nd of Thornton’s MLS career, which ties him with Tony Meola for third place on the all-time MLS shutout list.
Quotable (with contributions from reporter Phil Collin):
*Here’s Chivas USA Coach Preki on the performance:
“It was a hard-fought game. … I don’t think it was a night when we were particularly sharp. … I would like us to play better soccer, more fluid, better organized.”
*Here’s defensive midfielder Paulo Nagamura on the ineffective Sacha Kljestan (who didn’t hang around to talk to reporters afterward), pulled from the game by Preki:
“I don’t think it’s a surprise. Preki is a very demanding coach so he wants all his players to play their best every single game.
“We all know that Sacha can do much more than he has been doing. . . He didn’t get involved too much in the game, so maybe that’s why he decided to sub him.
“The difference I think is the other guys have stepped up and contributed to the team. We have contributions from all the new guys and the young guys and we’re not relying on Sacha. … We know that Sacha is a difference maker. He may not be in his best soccer right now, but once he will be he’ll help us a lot.
“Every player has ups and downs and we just have to make sure when one player – Sacha or other players – when they are down, we pick them up and give them a boost and help the team. That’s what we’re doing with Sacha. We know he’s not at his best now but we all as a group we’re going to do everything for him to come back to his best form.”
Here’s Jesse Marsch on Kljestan:
“It’s been a long week for all of us. Obviously the travel and everything affected guys in different ways. You could see that Sacha was a step behind today for whatever reason.
“Listen, I think everybody around here understands how important he is to us. The better he plays, the better we are as a team. We’ve just got to keep tweaking things, finding a better combination of forwards up top to kind of combine with Sacha to get him going. I
don’t think there’s really that much concern whether he came out of the game or any of that because we all know how important he is.“It’s still hard for a young guy to have so much pressure and he’s supposed to be this big-time player and he definitely is. He’s learning how to deal with that and we’re learning how to keep him going. I don’t think it’s just Sacha or just the players around him. … We’re still kind of developing as a team and the best part is as we’re doing that, we’re still winning games.”
*And here’s Preki on why he subbed Kljestan:
“I didn’t think he was particularly sharp,” he said, adding he didn’t think there was any particular reason. “It’s just locker room stuff. We’ll talk about it and see if we can help. it should be a big concern for him – not for me.”
