LAFC head coach Bob Bradley didn't mince words following his team's 2-1 loss to the San Jose Earthquakes on Sunday night at home. He started his post-match video conference call by saying, "It was a bad loss," and repeating that several times in recounting what happened.
He noted LAFC went up 1-0 in the match right before halftime thanks to Mark-Anthony Kaye, and had opportunities for the second goal that the team just couldn't finish.
"And then, in the final moments, we just need to be able to defend certain situations," he noted, alluding to the two goals the Quakes manufactured in the final 15 minutes.
"We give San Jose credit," Bradley said. "They've gone through a tough stretch, and today, at the end, they fought hard. But we still look only at ourselves for our inability to close the game out, or to deal with some moments late that caused us to give up two goals."
"We had chances to get the second goal. When we don't finish them off, it still means that they know they're fighting for a chance, first to equalize, and when they got the equalizer, then they had a little bit of momentum and made one more play at the end."
Highlights: LAFC 1, San Jose Earthquakes 2
"It was a bad loss," he added. "We let ourselves down."
Though they weren't able to generate offense when they needed it in this match, Bradley observed that it wasn't a concern for him based on what he saw from his team.
"We created many chances," he asserted. "I don't think we had enough guys that played well. When you go into games, to be sharp, to take advantage of certain situations, controlling the midfield ... for me, it's a night where we had advantages. The fact that we weren't good enough tonight is something that we're disappointed about. But we continue to create chances, and we've just got to find a better way to play right until the end of games, to execute better when we have advantages, to concentrate in different situations defensively."
While Kaye said the Quakes consistently pose a challenge with their style of play, this match was more on what LAFC didn't do than what San Jose did.
"We lost this game. It's as simple as that," he said after the match. "Our standard is very high. I think we let ourselves down today, be that winning certain balls, or running back harder, or running forward harder. We were up 1-0, and we ended up losing 2-1, so we lost this game."
