Bruce Arena: æA great performanceÆ

After the USA beat Trinidad & Tobago, 2-0, Coach Bruce Arena, Ante Razov, Earnie Stewart and Claudio Reyna met the press: BRUCE ARENA ON THE USA’S PERFORMANCE: “It was a good performance. Certainly one of the better performances for us. We had solid ball movement at times and we created good chances and again defensively we were really solid. We had to appreciate the fact that they had two outstanding strikers in the game today. ôTo perform the way we did at the defensive end of the field today was very impressive. Give a lot of credit to our backline and all of our midfielders and really everybody did a good job defensively. “[We] had a few chances to get the third goal, and got a little sloppy with their opportunities, got a little bit casual in the last 10 minutes of the first half, and T&T did a good job creating some chances and that carried over to the first 10 minutes of the second half. Overall, it wasn’t perfect but who is complaining? This is about getting points and we are pretty close to being in the big dance next year.” ON ANTE RAZOV AND JOVAN KIROVSKI STARTING TOGETHER: “I thought that Ante and Jovan have looked pretty good over the last week-and-a-half they have been together and they certainly played well together in Jamaica. I think that Joe-Max (Moore) and Brian (McBride) are certainly going to be able to help us, but I think they are a little tight right now. And when I made the decision to go with the other guys I think they felt a little bit more relaxed. The next time they come around they are really going to be able to help us. ôI thought Joe played really well tonight until he rolled his ankle. I think those are our two best strikers at the moment, but certainly I feel confident with Moore and McBride helping us in the future.” ON WHAT EARNIE STEWART BRINGS TO THE TEAM: “Earnie played well. His experience, quickness, ball possession. He comes out of the midfield. We made a point to the team today to get him more involved. He made a couple of good runs and we hoped we could push him over the top and his activity and coordination was excellent. He’s a great leader on the field.” ON EDDIE POPE’S RETURN TO THE LINEUP: “Eddie was good. Solid performance. It is hard to get back in the saddle. He’s been away for awhile. We thought [Carlos] Llamosa’s played very well. We just wanted to get that opportunity to get Eddie a game. ôCarlos had a yellow card going into today’s game and we felt that we needed to have another centerback ready to play, and Eddie is certainly a quality player who has proven himself.” ON TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO’S STYLE: “Trinidad typically plays a 3-5-2, so that is what we anticipated. We thought that they played pretty well and did a good job. The story of this game was the early goal. We told our guys early in the game that we thought they would threaten us a little bit, and we caught them flat a little bit, and we pushed Ante through. The story of our team is we made minor adjustments every step of the way.” ON TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO’S STERN JOHN: “Stern John has been outstanding throughout the qualification. I think he is an excellent player and I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves. He’s been outstanding and played a good game, and I’ll tell you I was very impressed with the way Stern John and Dwight Yorke played today. They played very well. “When you play with three in the back it requires that your outside midfielders do a lot of defending, and we felt that that probably wasn’t the strongest suit of their outside players. So we were able to get our outside players in the game and put their flank players under a little bit of pressure and make them have to do some dirty work.” ON TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO’S SPIRIT IN THE GAME: “Give them credit. After being down 2-0 at half, they came out and tried to get a goal early. Through the entire game they never quit. I give them a lot of credit for their performance.” ON THE EXPERIENCE GAINED BY THE U.S. IN THE SEMIFINAL ROUND OF QUALIFYING: “What people don’t realize is that in the last round the best group was the group we were playing in. With the U.S., Costa Rica and Guatemala. It was great preparation for this round. We got tremendous experience out of that. ôObviously we made some mistakes, and if this game was held in July we would have been in a little bit of trouble. We started eight European players today and to have to come into those camps with those guys coming off a four-or-five week break would have been difficult. And that was a little bit of the story last year. We are fortunate that the qualifying schedule came out the way it did.” ON WHETHER THE TEAM’S SUCCESS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE FINAL ROUND WILL AFFECT HIS PLANS IN THE FINAL FIVE GAMES: “We have the luxury of making a couple of mistakes now. But certainly we aren’t going to give up until we qualify. We’re really close, but we have to keep pushing forward until we are mathematically there. Who knows how many points you need to qualify, but after five games, 13 out of 15 points is pretty damn good. We probably need three more points in the next five games to qualify.” ANTE RAZOV, U.S. forward ON THE GAME: “I saw æGoose’ [Agoos] get the ball and the first thing they did was step forward and they were pretty flat. We talked about before the game putting the ball behind their defense, and we caught them right away. ôIt was a good night. We got three points and I felt good out there. We had a lot of chances. Jovan and I played well up there. We were pretty dangerous. It was most important to get the three points.ö ON HOW YOU AVOID LETTING UP NOW THAT THE TEAM IS SO CLOSE: “There is still some work to do. There are still a couple of games left. It’s not like we played great tonight. We slacked off a little bit in the second half, and our intensity and concentration dropped a little bit. We moved well off the ball and created space. We know we have difficult games and it is hard to play down there in the CONCACAF region. We know we have to take three points at home, that is the most important thing.” ON BRUCE GIVING SO MANY PLAYERS PLAYING TIME “He gives a lot of guys chances. And a lot of guys come through. We are making his life difficult which is good for everybody. The rest will be that he has to make the decision, and he will probably go with who is hot and everyone will just be fine.” EARNIE STEWART, U.S. forward ON THE TEAM’S DEPTH: “We have a lot of depth in this group and Clint Mathis is a great player and we are going to miss Claudio Reyna [who got his second yellow card] against Mexico, too, but that’s life, that’s soccer. You have to deal with that. We have such a good group of players and today Ante Razov stood up and next game somebody else is going to step up. I am very confident that we are going to get a good result in Mexico.” ON THE USA’s PROGRESS: “We’ve grown since 1994 and 1998 and now we’re in the qualifying for 2002, you can see this team has come a long way. I didn’t think we’d have this many points at this time, because obviously playing away at Honduras and Jamaica, they are difficult games. And you come out with a win and a tie over there and that gives you a little bit more than you might have thought. CLAUDIO REYNA, U.S. midfielder ON THE TEAM’S CURRENT STANDING: “We are very excited. You couldn’t have asked for a better start really. We’ve done the business at home, and away as well. We probably have the best away record away as well, so far. Everything is going very well. We are defending very well and after five games have given up only one goal against good teams with good attacking players. A lot has to be said about our team defense, working hard and we are getting the right results. We are going into each game with the right attitude and that is important in these qualifiers just to get results.” ON THE GAME TONIGHT, AND WHETHER HE THOUGHT THEY WOULD HAVE AS MUCH SPACE TO WORK AS THEY DID: “No, not really, I thought they would be up on our attackers a little bit more, but especially early we tried to hit some balls over the top and it worked. In the first three minutes we played three balls over the top and obviously we got a goal from Ante. That really relaxed us a bit, and it made them come out and play, so we were able to get some room in the first half.”