Owain Evans

Schantz quizzed on team selection, away form

 

In the eyes of Rising coach Rick Schantz, there were positives to take from the team’s last match.

“I thought some of the football we played at Vegas was spectacular,” he said.

Yet two late goals for the hosts meant that, instead of basking in the glory of a perfect nine points over eight days, Schantz was fielding questions on refereeing decisions and his team selection during the weekly press conference.

FALLOUT LAS VEGAS

After taking a 3-1 lead on the stroke of the 90th minute, Rising collapsed to a 3-3 draw. According to Schantz, the atmosphere in the locker room was despondent afterwards.

“I think they were upset in the manner of which we gave up the goals, but as a manager, now’s not the time to go in the locker room and start screaming and yelling at a team that’s in first place, that’s played actually really good football,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that the team didn’t achieve the expectations that they’d set, with Schantz acknowledging that he would have taken seven points out of nine if he’d been offered them prior to the San Diego game.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “I had to tell all of them to keep their heads up, and we move forward as a team. There’s nobody to blame but ourselves and we’ve just got to move on, because you can’t let one game cost you three points a week later.”

Yet that didn’t stop some attention from falling on the officiating. With the equalizing goal hitting the back of the net in the 99th minute, despite just four minutes of added time being displayed, Schantz was disgruntled. He approached referee Malik Badawi after the match, but wasn’t best pleased with the response.

“He ignored me”, Schantz said. “He stood there. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I’d asked him a couple questions and he wouldn’t look at me.”

Even looking back now, Rising’s coach is irritated at the way the match was allowed to end.

“It’s frustrating because I’ve gone back and watched the game twice now, and there’s no need to do that much stoppage time,” he added. “Even though we were subbing, we had the right. In football now, when you’re winning the game, and you’ve saved your subs for [added] time, you have the right to do that. It doesn’t mean they should add extra time for it, and we got punished for that.”

TEAM SELECTION EXAMINED

Also under the microscope was Schantz’s team selection. He was quick to defend his selection of backup goalkeeper Eric Dick as a way to rest a fatigued Zac Lubin. He also defended Dick’s performance.

“Two of the goals, I think Eric had nothing to do with,” Schantz said. “It’s not like he made mistakes. The third one, does he push the line a little higher and come out a little bit more aggressive? Maybe, but in that situation, we could have done a lot more.”

Eric Dick’s inclusion over Zac Lubin (pictured) was questioned by fans on social media.

Dick did not record a save during the match, but his coach was also quick to fire back at critics who suggest the Kansas City loanee shouldn’t have been on the field.

“For anyone to say that Zac should have been playing over Eric, they’re not in our clubhouse,” Schantz said. “They don’t see us at training every day. They don’t know what’s going on.”

That wasn’t the only change under scrutiny, as Joey Calistri was dropped in favour of Owusu-Ansah Kontoh. That change in turn forced Darnell King to be switched over from the left side to the right.

“Calistri had not played 90 minutes until the first game against San Diego,” Schantz said. “Then he turned around four days later and played another 90 minutes in 94 degrees with 50% humidity, so to ask him to play 270 minutes in eight days at a position he’s never really played was too much.”

After two straight starts at full-back, Schantz chose to rest Joey Calistri against Vegas

Meanwhile, Schantz also confirmed that José Aguinaga, who has been left out of the last three matchday squads, has been left out for tactical reasons.

“We have a very competitive midfield,” he said. “Any player that you say that hasn’t been on the trips, you have to ask who would you take out of the team. If you start thinking about it, that gets pretty challenging. We feel that we have six very good midfielders in this team.”

Aguinaga’s time will come, Schantz said, but the recent performances of others have made it more difficult to rotate.

“Right now, Sam [Stanton], Jon Bakero have kind of solidified the spots,” he added. “Kevon [Lambert] is playing at another level right now that’s unbelievable, so it’s hard to break in.”

TRIPPING UP ON THE ROAD

Dropping points in Vegas has narrowed the gap between first place Rising and second place Orange County. With a Tuesday night win at Cashman Field, the Californian side could move to within three points of Phoenix with two games in hand. Is the team feeling the pressure, then?

“If you told me that San Diego, Las Vegas and LA Galaxy and Orange County were all ahead of us, that would be a lot of pressure,” Schantz said. “But right now, we know we need to finish in the top two in the division to make the playoffs. Of course we want to win the division. We want to win every game we play. There’s no more pressure than every week for us.”

He added that the team remains on track to achieve what was set out when play restarted.

“We know we want to get somewhere between 33 and 37 points this season,” he said, “We felt that that would solidify making the playoffs, and the way things are breaking out right now, at least we can still hit some goals and that’s all.”

Yet Rising’s away form has been a struggle, with the team picking up just five points out of a possible twelve. That isn’t something that concerns Schantz.

“When you compare it to winning 20 in a row, that sounds pretty bad,” he said, “but when we had lost and drew against Orange County, you only had one point. And then you took four out of the next six [points], so I think that we’ve addressed it.”

Schantz touched on the struggles of traveling in USL even during normal times, but said that the pandemic has made road trips much more difficult.

“You’ve got all kinds of different elements that you have to deal with, and now you don’t have fans, there’s no extra motivation,” Rising’s coach said. “It’s uneasy. That’s the only way I can put it. But we keep moving forward, and we know that we’ll be fine.”

With that added difficulty on the road, does it increase the pressure on Rising to finish on top and avoid an away game in the first round of the playoffs? According to Schantz, it doesn’t.

“Unless you’re going to have the best record in the league, you might have to go on the road at some point,” he concluded. “Our goal here is always to win every game, and to have every game at home that we can, and hopefully by the playoffs we’ll be able to have some fans, so yeah, I’d love to be first in our division.

“It doesn’t create more pressure, because once you get on the road and you’re in the playoffs, we’ve all seen what teams can do in a one-off game.”

SUB-PAR RULING FROM LEAGUE, SAYS SCHANTZ

Finally, Schantz expressed his frustration at events in San Antonio last weekend. Hosting FC Tulsa, the Texans used an additional substitution oportunity beyond their allotted three deep in stoppage time.

“I think there’s a lot of tactics and there’s a lot of strategy to it, and I think it’s not cool that we can say ‘oh, we weren’t sure. We weren’t paying attention,'” he said. “They basically got an extra sub late in the game, maybe to kill the momentum. There’s a million reasons.”

Schantz joked that it would have solved a dilemma on Saturday if he’d known he could take an additional substitution opportunity without any penalty. On a more serious note, he felt that declaring the game a forfeit would have been harsh, but at least consistent with previous decisions that USL has made.

Instead, USL has allowed the game to stand, and as yet has not disclosed any punishment that will be issued to San Antonio.

“I am usually in very good favour of the league and I think they make a lot of good decisions,” Schantz said. “But, especially in a year when we have a 37-page COVID protocol and I’m getting fined for having a mask below my nose every once in a while or something like that, I think that this was a bad decision.”

Ultimately, the decision won’t have an impact on Rising unless the two teams meet in the playoffs. As a result, Schantz was at least able to see the lighter side of the situation.

“If they end up having the best record in the league,” he laughed, “we’ll complain then.”

Watch Schantz’s full answer on San Antonio’s substitution blunder: