Minnesota United head coach Adrian Heath has become known for occasionally dropping colorful quotes in his media interviews, and the Loons boss delivered one of his most interesting sound bites yet following Minnesota's 2-2 draw against Chicago Fire FC on Wednesday.
It started in his on-field interview immediately after the match, in which a pumped-up Heath had some words for analysts who he says spend far too much time talking about tactics. You can watch that below, which we highly recommend.
Heath wasn't done, hammering home a similar sentiment at his postgame press conference when he was asked about the difference between the first half of the match, which saw the Loons fall behind 2-0, and the second half when they came back to tie it 2-2.
“Attitude. Individuals taking responsibility. Not taking the easy option. Playing on the front foot. Individual battles," Heath said. "It sounds very simple. It’s one of the hardest things to do in modern-day football. Everybody is a coach. Everybody knows what to do. Everybody knows what tactics are. I think with [Sheffield United manager] Chris Wilder recently it was said, I’m fed up with teams beating us and then everybody talks about the tactics. They never talk about how people want to run. How people want to fight. How people want to play the right ball and get out of your comfort zone. And, if we do that, we’re OK. As we proved second half. I thought some of our play was excellent second half. But, it shouldn’t need me to be as irate and as emotional I was at halftime to get that type of reaction.”
Watch: Adrian Heath delivers strong words during his press conference
As far his team's form ahead of the playoffs, Heath said he became animated at halftime of the match with his team trailing by two goals, trying to instill all-out effort that he said he was happy to see materialize for the rest of the match.
“The one thing I can take out of it, it’s seven games I think that we haven’t lost a game," he said. "You know, we’ve kept going. And the response was excellent today in the second half. But, as I said to the players, and I wasn’t being disrespectful, we cannot play at 75 percent and win games. We can’t do it. We’re not that good. And I’m not on about our team. I’m on about teams in the MLS. The parity that there is in this league, if you play, as I say, 75 percent, 80 percent, you’re going to get beat.
"And it shouldn’t need me at halftime to be as animated and as angry as I am to get that response in the second half," he continued. "Because it’s nothing to do with the fact that we haven’t played. Yeah, we could use it as an excuse. We haven’t trained together since the last game, the last Wednesday game. I get that. That doesn’t mean you can’t run. That doesn’t mean you can’t fight the guy you’re playing against. And that’s never changed. I played in a really good team. Full of internationals. And we were the same. We dropped it a notch, we were bang average. But we knew, if we wanted to be successful, we knew what it took. And we weren’t prepared to put up with mediocre and 75 percent. And we never let anybody get away with it. And that has never changed. And it never will.”
