💬 Coach Oscar Pareja on Orlando City's opportunity to shine on world stage: 'We earned it'

Orlando City head coach Oscar Pareja 

On the opportunity ahead and how his previous experience coaching against Tigres will help prepare the team... 

The experience itself is going to be fantastic. For the players, for the youngsters, for the ones who are playing for the first time in this international match, international competition. Regarding our [the coaches’] experience when we came here to Mexico, it was tremendous, it was great. Very passionate country, orientated to this game. People are very, very, very passionate. The environment that we normally find in the stadiums, it’s nothing that that we haven’t found somewhere else but, of course, coming to a city that pays that passion on this game and the two teams that are from the city. So they will find surely here, a team with that energy, with that desire to compete and go forward, that’s the normal, for sure. They will find that. And we hope that we can control [the game].

On the current health of the team...

Our team is very healthy at the moment. We have the squad ready. Obviously like any other team, we have a couple concerns, when you have to probably to reduce the load of the player or choose one player or another one in different games. But our health is very good right now.

Message to fans in Monterrey and those watching back in Orlando...

Well, to our fans, to the whole franchise, to the city: it is a privilege to come to Mexico and, not for a friendly game, but for such a fantastic game. It's the Champions League here in Concacaf, playing against a team who has a lot of tradition and our fans should be very proud because this one is not that somebody gave it to us but we earned it. Just being in this competition is because Orlando City has earned that possibility. We are very proud to represent the Club and we will be pushing. It’s going to be a great night.

Orlando City captain Mauricio Pereyra

On if the team feels recovered heading into the match...

We feel we are ready, recovered now. We had some rotation during the last game and this, it was the coach and the coaching staff, they tried to manage the time on the [bench] that we had during the game. So I think all of us are fully recovered, some of the guys, probably the less of them, they played 90 minutes but most of us we rested, we played 45 or less minutes and we are already ready for the game.

On preparing for the atmosphere at Estadio Universitario...

Yeah, it will be one of the first games that we play like this, all together as a group. But individually the most of us came from South America and this kind of atmosphere around we’re used to playing in. In my case, the last time it was like almost 11 years ago, but the other guys they’re used to playing games like this. When they play Libertadores Cup it’s almost the same atmosphere so I think we will not have a problem with this.