Midfielder Cole Bassett
On his role in the midfield
I feel good. It's obviously that's the role I grew up playing. If anybody was to judge me off what my best position is, I think that's it, but obviously, there's times we're in that game, you can see I move out to the left, I like to get forward a lot. One of the job's responsibilities is staying back a bit more and being the rest of defense. I'd love to get forward and get a couple more goals, but besides that, I love it. I love the way that Chris lets me be free out there and confident to go after it. Hopefully, I can continue to do that. But we’ve got Connor coming back, as well. Jasper is starting to get back healthy, so maybe he moves those guys in there and I move a little bit higher up the hill.
On the team facing top-ranked teams in back-to-back weeks and maintaining good form
Chris instills a confidence in us that it doesn't matter whether we're home or away, we go after the game. I think that's something that we pride ourselves in, and we want our fans to have confidence in the team, in that we're a team that plays with energy, and we attack and we're fun to watch, but it doesn't always happen. We want to play exciting football. So I think whether we're home or away, we'll go after it. I think that's led to us getting some good results. Then you see a game like San Jose and this one against Salt Lake where we were up two goals, and then we drop points. That's just football, though. We're going to continue to stick to our style and we're not going to change the way that we play. I think we just need to end those games when they're 2-0, go up by one more goal and it's over. But, for us, I think as we continue to go along through the season, I think those home matches that we get are going to be key for us to stay at the top of the standings.
On Connor Ronan's recent return from injury
He's great. If you watch training everyday, you see how good of a player he is. His first full training back, he was the best player on the field. He's quality on the ball. He allows the rest of us to do our job going forward because he gets us the ball. So it'll be important to have him back, and it pushes everybody. I think you've seen [Oliver Larraz’s] levels step up a little bit since he's come back into the team and I think it's pushing all of us to keep our spots on the team. For Connor, he's trying to get back in the team. I think it's good for all of us to have competition, it’ll make us better once it comes game time. So we're happy to have him back.
On the mindset heading into a match with No. 2-ranked Minnesota
It's a big one for us this week, we haven't had too many home games. We need to win those home games. And after the loss last week, it's important to rebound. We always say, don't miss two in a row. We’ve got a good side coming in, we know they're losing a key player in [Miguel Tapias] with a red card. So we'll look to go after them. It's a game that we got to go in thinking we’ll win. I think we'll respond well, it's a confident group.
Head Coach Chris Armas
On the result against Salt Lake
We took a hard look today at this last game. We always look at all the good things we're doing, and then we take hard look at things we have to improve. When we win, when we lose, when we draw, that's our process. What I tell the team is we're on our way to becoming a really good team. The results show that, the performances show that, the mentality of the team shows that. We've beaten some pretty good teams this year—LAFC, New York City, Salt Lake earlier on. Those things are never easy to do. And we've put other teams in really tough games. The other day against Salt Lake is what I'm most proud of, and I know what these guys are most proud of, is that there was something on the line. You would know it if you're a fan of the team, if you work for this club, you're on the bench or on the coaching staff, you knew something was on the line. We gave everything we had, we fell a little short, but makes us no less as competitors and winners. We're on to the next one, we’ve got a big game coming up at home and against another good team in Minnesota.
On the challenge of a three-game week and the team's fitness in the aftermath
We are a young team with a new philosophy and way of doing things. That has challenges, it takes time, but we are becoming who we want to be. But with a young-ish team, one quality is oftentimes that you can run, you can sprint, and you can recover. We trust our guys, we saw some really good things in the previous games, so let's run it back with a lot of our core guys. To Salt Lake, I do give credit, they never went away and they made it hard towards the end. Their building momentum is real and they grabbed it. We got to see how we dealt with three games in a week, we came through with good performances, and we put ourselves in a spot to win every one of those games. We’ll learn from it, but guys came back healthy. For the most part, we're in really good shape.
On the mindset heading into a match with No. 2-ranked Minnesota
We always think about yesterday and where we want to go tomorrow to get the most out of today. One of my mentors, Manny Schellscheidt back in New Jersey, taught me to think like this, that you have to look at previous stuff to learn. Games reveal only so much about who you are. It's important that we look hard at it, we shut the door in the video room, and we get after it. If you saw the look on their faces and the way they show up on this day, what a joy it is to coach these guys, they’re just such good young men. And that's the starting point, what makes us good. Of course we look at this past one fixture because there's a lot to take from it, and we think about the next opponent. We know Minnesota is good too and they'll have some tendencies of some teams that we played recently, if they come out and they're five in the back. They're really organized team. They're tight, structurally, front to back. They're really tough in transition and exceptional on set pieces. Like every other game, it's another big test for us and we love it. We love the tests and we love the people we do it with here so we look forward to it.
