Orlando City Coach’s Show Recap: Adrian Heath Talks Real Salt Lake, Looks Forward to FC Dallas

On Tuesday night’s Orlando City Coach’s Show with Adrian Heath, the Lions boss discussed Saturday night’s 10-man draw at Real Salt Lake, previewed the upcoming game against FC Dallas, and weighed in on other news around Orlando City SC.

On Kaká's Red Card

• “On the day, there’s that many legs and you’re at ground level, you can’t quite see whether he’s landed on him, whether he’s on the side of him. We were really surprised to see the red card. In hindsight, having watched it a few times, Ricky’s stood on him. If the referee’s said it’s ‘violent conduct’ because he’s meant to do it then he’s got a very good perception of what was going on. Ricky said he’s tried to get out of the way of him and he couldn’t so I’ll take his word on it. But it ruined what could’ve been a really, really good game.”

On Real Salt Lake

• “Going in at 1-0 just before halftime, I’m thinking they were getting more and more desperate because they need to win at home.”
• “I thought in the second half they would push people on and I thought on the counter-attack maybe we’d get something more than a point from this game.”
• “In the end it was a gallant point.”

On Not Appealing the Red Card

• “The decision’s been made. It’s not an easy mechanism to actually go in and try to get a player off from a suspension because it’s very, very difficult and we just felt we’ll take our medicine, take the one-game ban, and move on and that’s what we gotta do.”

On Referee Performance

• “I did ring the referee’s association on Monday morning and, as of yet, at nine minutes past eight on Tuesday, nobody’s got back to me.”

On His Team's Second Half Performance

• “The one thing we talked about was not beating ourselves.”
• “We said, ‘Let them play the ball wide and let’s defend the cross.’ And at some stage we knew we’d need Tally and he came up with a great save that he tipped onto the post, which is typical of what we expect from him these days.”
• “We had the best chance of the game from the corner when Seb Hines headed it back in and Ledge ends up in the middle of the goal and tries to put too much on it and it comes off his shoulder.”
• “When Ricky came off with where we were playing, the conditions, would I settle for a point? Yes, I would definitely settle for a point.”

On Substitutions

• “I looked at the bench and I didn’t know where I was going to go to make an awful lot of difference to what we had.”
• “I wanted to get some minutes for Pedro (Ribeiro) because he needs it so I didn’t want to take him off too early. And we wanted Rivas through the middle because of his pace on the counter-attack. We thought he was going to be a threat that way.”

On the USL Team and Louisville City Relationship

• “It’s come a lot quicker than we thought.”
• “We haven’t really been able to work properly with Louisville. I feel sorry for that because, obviously James (O’Connor) is there who we love dearly and Wayne Estopinal (OCSC minority owner).”
• “The one good thing about having the USL back now is that, these kids, even (when) they’re on the bench on the Saturday, and we play Sunday, we could actually play them in a league game in the USL on Sunday.”
• “Long term, I think this is one of the best things we’ve ever done.”

On Young Players

• “With the injuries we’ve had, we’ve only been able to send Sidney Rivera there because a lot of our young ones, like they were in Salt Lake, have been all on the bench. The bad thing about that is that they’ve all been on the bench, they don’t play, and we haven’t been able to get any minutes in to them.”
• “They’ve been around the first team which has been good but they need to get minutes.”

On Pro American Soccer Growth

• “All the necessary levels, whether it be second division or third division, there’s a level for whatever stage you are as a young player. There’s somewhere for you to play. And the most important thing for us, they’re going to be playing under our umbrella. They’re going to be playing under one of our coaches (Anthony Pulis) playing the same way the first team do. And the most important thing is we’ll be able to see them every day.”
• “The most important thing (for the young players) is that they play against men.”

On Anthony Pulis

• “We’ve got big hopes for Anthony. He’s only 34, 35 and he’s taken all his (coaching) badges. He’s got a great understand of the game. He’s obviously got a very famous father (Tony Pulis) who’s a coach and he obviously listens. He’s very close to his dad. He’s picking up a lot of things. I think it’s a great step for him. He was in the right place at the right time.”

On His Favorite Part of Coaching

• “There are a couple things. Winning on the road. There’s nothing better than winning on the road. And watching young players that you’ve helped develop move on to bigger and better things. There’s nothing better than when you get a letter from a kid you worked with four or five years ago. I had a couple of guys in England who eventually went for six, eight, nine, ten million pounds. And when you’ve worked with a kid and you see how much he’s worked and how much he wants it and then you see him go an fulfill his dreams, I get more pleasure out of that because I know how hard they’ve worked to get where they are.”

On Carlos Rivas

• “He’ll start at the weekend. We’ve just got to decide where he plays. Will he play wide left? Will he play through the middle? Obviously with the situation with Ricky we’ve got a decision to make about what we do with the team.”

On Tactics Without Kaká

• “We’ve got some players with niggling injuries. By Thursday we’ll make a decision about whether we make just one change with personnel or whether we do tweak the system a little bit and maybe change the shape a little bit.”

On Who Will Be Captain with the Absence of Kaká

• “Either Tally Hall or Lewis Neal.”

On Bryan Rochez

• “The good news is he arrives back in the country this evening. He’s been away for more than six weeks with visa issues and passport problems. So hopefully he’s been able to keep himself fit and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see Bryan on the field. But it’s been an absolute nightmare for the kid in the past month and a half. And he’s been stuck in New Zealand for, I think, four and a half weeks trying to get his visa processed.”

On Kevin Molino's Rehab Progress

• “He comes to the home games. He comes in every morning. Obviously he doesn’t join in with the team yet. He’s still quite a ways away from there. But he’s getting better. He’s getting the shape back in his leg and he’s starting to smile a little bit more which is always a good sign.”

On the Progress of Aurelien Collin and Brek Shea

• “Aurelien could possibly be available for the weekend. Brek we are monitoring. We’ll have a better idea in the next couple of days as to what we’re going to do moving forward. Whether we give him more time or whether we send him to a specialist to probably have a closer look at him.”

On Saturday's Opponent, FC Dallas

• “Very dynamic team. Very inconsistent this year. When they’re good, they’re very, very good. At the weekend they were very good.”
• “The important thing for us is there have two very special players. Mauro Diaz, the little number 10, and Fabian Castillo up front. I think probably the most dynamic player in the league and I think that if we can contain them to relatively keep them quiet then we have a good opportunity but it’ll be a good game.”