In the best-of-three first round of the playoffs against Real Salt Lake, the Loons often looked like they had an extra player or two on the field, defensively speaking. The Galaxy reversed that, usually making them look as if they had two too few.
“You concede as early as you do, you really start on the back foot,” center back Michael Boxall said. “Things we emphasized throughout the season, we didn’t do well enough on. There were things we were watching all week for, and happened how we planned for, but we just didn’t execute as well as we should have.”
There will be plenty of time to look back on the season, but Ramsay has always maintained it’s been a really successful year, regardless of the beating in the conference semifinals.
And so despite what he said was a “sour taste” of the final score, he was positive about the year as a whole.
“I feel like once we have some time to breathe and we look back over the work that was done, the strides that everyone’s taken, the strides that the club has taken as a whole, I think it’s a really good season, it’s a really impressive season,” he said. “I’ve said to the players, I’ve loved it from the perspective of the work day to day, the environment that’s created, my development as a coach, the group’s development. I’ve loved it. I look back with a lot of satisfaction from day one to now, and everything that went in between and all the difficulty.
“I particularly enjoyed these last three months where we’ve been able to get to such a good place so quickly. So I know when the dust settles, we’ll look back with a real sense of satisfaction.”