{"id":31356,"date":"2018-04-09T15:18:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T22:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=31356"},"modified":"2018-04-09T15:18:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T22:18:26","slug":"beitashour-lafc-need-to-play-from-start-to-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/04\/09\/beitashour-lafc-need-to-play-from-start-to-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"Beitashour: LAFC need to play \u201cfrom start to finish\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angels on Parade – LOS ANGELES, Veteran knows what needs to be done to weather long road trips. Reflecting on Los Angeles Football Club\u2019s 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Atlanta United, defender Steven Beitashour said he didn\u2019t believe the scoreline was indicative of how the team performed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Things seemed to go downhill after referee Ted Unkel rescinded a red card issued to Chris McCann in the first minute of the game after a challenge to midfielder Benny Feilhaber.<\/p>\n

Atlanta proceeded to score a goal in the first period and four more in the second \u2013 including a pair of penalties from Miguel Almiron in the latter stages of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about pride at that point,\u201d Beitashour said, in his postgame interview. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate to give up a few more. The score line was 5-0 and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s reflective of how we play. I don\u2019t feel it was a 5-0 game, but it came down to little details and it\u2019s something we trained on all week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game came at a time when LAFC\u2019s start to their inaugural campaign drew some similarities to last year\u2019s start for United when they raced out and won three of their first seven en route to a place in the MLS Cup playoffs \u2013 where they lost to Columbus in the play-in round on penalty kicks.<\/p>\n

Coming into Saturday\u2019s game, LAFC was 2-1-0 and in the top four of the MLS Western Conference after wins at Seattle and Real Salt Lake. Despite the start and with Saturday\u2019s loss, Beitashour said the team knows it will be difficult to keep that pace over the grueling MLS season.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing an expansion team, it\u2019s difficult to come into a league where guys have played together for a long time mesh really well,\u201d Beitashour said. \u201cI think the way [Atlanta] really flew out of the gates was impressive and, I think people want to say we\u2019re similar to that because of the first two game, but it\u2019s difficult to keep that going especially when you are on the road for this long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, the season doesn\u2019t get any easier with road matches at Vancouver Whitecaps and Montreal Impact in the coming weeks before LAFC will finally open Banc of California Stadium on April 29 against Seattle Sounders FC \u2013 a team LAFC defeated 1-0 in the season opener.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the veteran guys in the locker room need to pick everyone\u2019s heads up and keep the guys going,\u201d Beitashour said. \u201cWe have more games on the road before our first home match and I think guys are really looking forward to that, but we still have two very important games with Vancouver and Montreal coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, this is a position all too familiar to Beitashour. With Toronto FC last season, Beitashour started the season on the road for four of the first six games. Toronto won just one of those matches \u2013 a 2-0 win at Vancouver \u2013 before going on to win the Supporters\u2019 Shield, the Canadian Championship and then defeating Seattle in the MLS Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of us have been in this position with me specifically with Toronto the last couple of years having to start the season off with all of these road games. It\u2019s going to be a grind,\u201d Beitashour said. \u201cYou are going to have to dig in deep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about playing for yourself. It\u2019s about playing for the badge and playing for the guys next to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, however, LAFC will need to focus on Vancouver and Montreal before they can even whiff a thought of playing at home, or even think about the playoffs.<\/p>\n

That means having the road game mentality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is tough \u2026 similar to being down 2-0 or 3-0 on the road with 40,000 or 50,000 fans booing you and cheering against you, you are going to have to stick together and really fight, battle and scrap for 90 minutes, not for 30 minutes, not for 60 minutes \u2026 from start to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angels on Parade – LOS ANGELES, Veteran knows what needs to be done to weather…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":31357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,91,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1249,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31358,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356\/revisions\/31358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}