Coach’s Quotes: Questions about players answered for Petke in 4-1 loss to Sacramento

Real Salt Lake coach Mike Petke is always good for an interview after the match, win or loss. And despite any result, he’ll give you an honest answer — and, if he feels particularly like it, make a joke.

There was no joking after RSL’s 4-1 loss to Sacramento Republic in the US Open Cup. Let’s take a

Quotes, as always, are from an RSL Communications release.

The rationale behind the lineup is that we have a very good USL side so they deserved to play and we have some guys who are looking for minutes and we also have a big game on the weekend. So the rationale was to put out a combination between first-team players like we did and Monarchs players who have earned that right.

That’s a pretty clear-cut look at how Petke constructed the lineup. I supported that thought before the match, and I continue to support it now.

And how do I think they did? We lost 4-1. So they weren't up for it like Sacramento was. We talked all week about how this is Sacramento's World Cup. We have to match them there. We talked about specifics and it played out the way we said we don't want it to play out."

Preach, Rev. Petke.

And the best part is here:

There were a lot of questions answered for me tonight regarding some players. I'm not going to share that publicly, but there are certainly some questions both good and bad that were answered today.

Are we allowed to start guessing who he’s talking about? To be a fly on the wall during conversations between him and Craig Waibel ... that’s the life right there.

It's continuing to implement what we want and make some adjustments and then from there look to finish strong and then hopefully we make it to the playoffs this year and go far and start it from scratch next year exactly how we want it to go."

Making the playoffs this year is a priority, and it will be tough — so hearing Petke describe it exactly that way is helpful toward understanding the goals of the club.

Sacramento is a great environment here. Congratulations to them. They deserved it today.

How nice.