Despite a 6-3-1 record since taking over the New York City Football Club, head coach Dome Torrent has been less than satisfied with the standard of soccer.
“We’ve had the same mistakes the last two or three games,” Torrent said. “I’m disappointed in myself because maybe I’m not able to convince my players – the last three games we didn’t improve – the opposite.”
The remarks followed a 2-0 road defeat to the Philadelphia Union on Saturday night.
“I prefer to defend forward and not backward and I don’t know exactly what happened in the second half,” Torrent said. “We defend always deep – always deep.”
The Union scored both goals in the second half with an 8-4 edge in shots after the interval and an overall possession advantage (50.5%).
“When I say many, many times to push up in the last 30 minutes – I said it maybe 11 or 12 times in the second half,” Torrent said. “It’s the way I worked the last 11 years. It’s easier when you regain the ball up and attack quickly. You run a lot when you don’t have the ball – that is the problem.”
Torrent’s integration into a new league with a fresh team that is attempting to absorb an alternate approach can affect the results.
“I think we have a long way to go,” goalkeeper Sean Johnson said “He has instilled different principles at a rate that we really can take them on. Some coaches come in and just dump in everything they want. He’s done a very good job step by step explaining what he wants. Every game its something different. He’s very simple and gives us objectives.”
Yet, Torrent is borderline exasperated when his team fails to recognize the second half tendency to defend closer to their own goal. Johnson explained that it is not necessarily a lack of recognition.
“As the game goes on its difficult,” “It’s a big ask for the guys and we can obviously do it and have been training it. But as the game goes on and the score stays 0-0 and we don’t possess the ball the way we want to and don’t finish opportunities – the legs get tired and its harder for guys to do that work.”
The opportunities were clear in the first half when Jo Inge Berget, David Villa and Maxi Moralez each missed chances from close range.
“We have to be more clinical,” Torrent said after his team muffed a chance to leap to the top of the Eastern Conference table.