Interview: Andrew Thomas and Josh Atencio post-match at Portland Timbers

just as far as getting into the game what was the uh you know it's very quick uh preparation what was the message anything like that as far kind of that not too much you prepare on the bench as if something like that was going to happen so prep the same stting Andy play a lot of games recently it wasn't much I was kind thr completely and then the goal um you know from distance you're kind of right there can kind of describe to you I ionizing close ionizing the close I'm pretty pissed off hly it's like one of those where it's an inch lower and I get a hand on it it goes around the corner kind of you dream of on the road against your Rivals back opportunist take a strike sometimes it just feels that way is there any is there any um consolation in this I mean they do score a lot of goals you guys didn't defensively worried we limit them to one and it was you know a really difficult one uh do you take anything that as far as the defens I mean yeah sure I think everything's still a little bit water to for too many so winings positives yeah I guess you can always say that keeping teams to low percentage chance chances is a good thing and the only other thing that I remember doing is about hit it from yeah Josh just just the way you guys played look like I mean you contained him pretty much most of the game except for the long range shot which he was open you talk about the philosophy was actually down yeah it was uh it was important for us to kind of mitigate what their strengths were and their strengths are kind of uh floating in those pockets and their combination play on uh on those counterattacks um and you know I thought we did a good job on most of them until the goal came um kind of just being aware of where Vander was because he lik to find those Pockets he likes to face forward and and hit guys on the Run um yeah and then just yeah just how frustrating it is you know I that high J's point it's a high scoring team in there and then you just just you guys just could find your open had a couple chances un point to try to score this game you want to score I mean you gotta score to win right um yeah um you know we'll have to we'll have to look at the film and and see what went wrong on on those chances you know we got on the ends of a lot of a lot of set pieces today um and and couldn't couldn't find one you know we had a couple couple chances good combinations out wide where we were able to find guys in the box um but you know we we got to create more chances we got to we got to score goals but I think ultimately you know we uh we would have liked to keep them zero and Josh how was how did it feel to get your first start in a while especially in such a big game against your biggest rifles how was that going into it how' you feel going into the match I was really excited yeah uh I I think this might be my first start against Portland in my career um which is a big deal to me uh you know playing against them in the academy and just and just them being our Rivals and cascad cup and everything it's uh you know when when I'm in the academy this is the games I dream Mo right the crowd was the crowd was good today and we come down in Portland and try to try to steal points off of them so um you know it it hurts to drop three to them for sure uh I mean he's moving around he's seems to be okay but you know what uh just keeping them down to the one goal gave you guys an opportunity and it looked like later on there you know you guys were pushing up and had a couple decent chances how important was it that if you did concede just keeping it the one yeah I mean you know we're in it to the very end it's there's a scramble in the Box it drops to someone at the you know the 95th 96th minute maybe we f get home and come out of here with a point uh that you don't have an opportunity to do that if you can see another one you know thr transition trying to do too much um so you know personally I was thinking making sure we were organized defensively making sure people weren't too excited to get forward so that we could you know stay in this game and you know that they the team is gonna hit people in behind we give him too much space and so we kind of cheat too high there was going to be space so I thought we did a good job 30 you on zo great thanks guys uh Jeremiah uh I see your hand up on Zoom you go ahead and ask your question now yeah I I guess on a week like this where you're coming off a uh emotional loss to LFC you know what what's the spirit like in the team right now um you know I think they I think the guys have a good attitude you know going going into the locker room uh today after the game you know obviously we're all we're all mad we just launched to Portland um but a lot of the a lot of the rhetoric in there is is positive you know the uh or trying trying to be positive you know the the guys and especially the leaders of the team went to everybody and say you know like um like this happens and we have we have to move forward especially this late in the season um we have to take what we can from this game and we have to we have to learn from it and we have to move on and take that to the game next week you know now now next week is the most important game and we're g to um do everything we can to to take take as many points as we can down this stret thanks uh reminder uh for those on Zoom please do the hand raised function if you'd like to ask a question we'll go to Owen Murray next Owen go ahead hey thanks guys just wanted to uh ask a little about what you took from the lafc game into this one if you felt like that helped all there there similar games in a lot of ways similar teams do you feel that helped do you think you improved in those moments um I mean I defensively I thought we were good against both teams he kind of count on one hand the number of saves I made in in two games um I think um I think we played it a little bit differently it was really comfortable easy playing out from the back this time um so we had a love of the ball I thought we could kind of get into our shape pretty well um and Stu in the final 30 is um yard from me typically so too much on that but uh I I don't think the games were uh massively I to say given the way we went about it just can find a goal