Nat Borchers shared some of his thoughts with me on Monday regarding Saturday’s loss at Seattle and the upcoming match against Columbus.
KIR: Last year you had success at making Rice Eccles a fortress, do you think you can do the same here at Rio Tinto stadium?
Borchers: This is a special place for us to play and I think that with the fans that we had last year, and the crowds we had last year we can replicate the success that we had last year at Rice Eccles.
KIR: What was the deal with the ball?
Borchers: Yeah it was flat. Did you see that? It had been flat for a few minutes before that and then I got the ball and with my first touch I realized that it was completely flat. And then I kicked the ball out and got another one that was flat again. I was quite shocked that Seattle didn’t do a good job of keeping their balls pumped up or after they scored their second goal we couldn’t find a ball to play with. We couldn’t really figure out what was going on there, but those things happen in games and you just have to play through it.
KIR: What was your thought on that match, what do you think was the difference was it the crowd, field conditions?
Borchers: Well I think that it was just the two halves. I think they won the first half, and we won the second half, but they capitalized on their chances and we had chances and didn’t capitalize on them. They didn’t really have any goal scoring chances in the second half, but had just one really good shot. But that’s going to be the difference in those games where both teams are really good with the ball, and both teams play good defensively.
KIR: It seemed that especially in the first half they won the battle in the midfield is that your impression?
Borchers: I think they won the battles pretty much all over the place. And up front I felt that we didn’t do a good job of winning balls off of Nate Jacqua or Fredy Montero, and we gave balls away in the midfield, either from the defense or the forwards or the midfielders – we all did a very poor job of moving the ball around. That’s our achilles heel. If we don’t possess the ball and play the wall, we’re in trouble.
KIR: So you had a game against Fredy Montero and a group of attacking young players there, and now you come back against Schelotto this week, is there anything different that you do when you play him?
Borchers: He’s a similar player to Montero but he’s smarter, he’s better, and he proved last year he’s a very, very good player. We’re going to have our hands full there’s no question about that and we did last week too. We got a little taste of it, but I think it’s going to be more difficult this week, because he is such a good player, an intelligent player. So we’re definitely going to have to be ready for them.
