Orlando City head coach Oscar Pareja
Opening Statement
“After difficult weeks, the boys always held on to the belief that we had good preparation that has to happen before even without having a result. But today was complete. We had a good performance and we had players just getting closer to their best performance. But we got the result. We scored goals, we had volume, we had the initiative to play the way we are. We controlled a team that had a lot of speed, especially in the flanks. So, we’re happy. Congratulations to the footballers, happy to see them enjoy the game and result.”
On having time to fine tune things for the team
“It has been a challenge for us to train and have a complete roster. This week was not an exception in regard to us having many players out due to international duty. But we had time to work with the group that we have, we had a couple of days where we had repetition and got back to some principles to feel more like ourselves. We know that we have to get the chemistry going with our new players and we got a lot of that work done this week.”
On Jack Lynn and Nico Lodeiro’s goals
“Jack is not a surprise. He is a player who has been patiently waiting for his opportunity. I could say he should have been playing more games at this point, with the way he has performed with the second group, and with what he has achieved as an individual. Today he opened the game, Jack’s discipline and constant effort showed up today and we’re happy about that. With Nico I’m happy to see him score. It’s not just all the work he does for the team in the game, but him scoring is great for us.”
Orlando City SC Midfielder Nico Lodeiro
On his goal and discussion with Luis Muriel on who would take the free kick
"We train together every day in practice and when the ball is on that side either Martín [Ojeda] or myself it’s our time. But we talked about it a little with [Luis] Muriel because we saw the goalkeeper move and I tried to move the ball, but it was fun. And finally, we can score a goal from the free kick.”
On this week’s training and team focus
“It was very important, our last week of training, because we [conceded] easy goals the last couple of games and tonight, I thought that we did a good job because we tried to block the space and we moved our shape. I thought our defending was very good, but we need to keep training because it’s a long season and we need to learn about our mistakes. It’s important for us to keep our clean sheet.”
On the team getting their first win of the MLS regular season
“Every time you want to win, but sometimes we play good and you can’t win the game. But we kept calm, we talked and we kept training because we know we have a good team, good players, good staff and a good organization, but sometimes it’s tight and also unlucky. Sometimes we play good and we can’t score because the goalkeeper makes good saves on the balls, and we concede easy goals. But the most important thing for us is that we maintained the calm, our focus, our concentration, and I thought tonight we played better.”
Orlando City SC Forward Jack Lynn
On what he saw on the play of his goal
“Yeah, I honestly don't really remember the build up too much. I just remember the ball kind of recirculating back to Dagur [Dan Thórhallsson] and trying to find an empty pocket of space in the box. When you put it right on my head it's hard to miss that one.”
On scoring his first MLS goal
“It feels amazing. We waited a long time for it. We've had some really good teams here and some really good players, especially the striker position, so I had to bide my time a little bit. I was really happy to score tonight and help the team out. We've been playing really well and just haven't gotten the results for whatever reason, so it was really good to right the ship tonight.”
On the mentality of this team to breakthrough and get the win tonight
“We've been playing really well and the main thing we've been focusing on is just working hard in practice to try and get those finishing details right so we can turn around some of these close games. Just staying positive knowing that we are playing well and that we are a good team.”
