D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen
On his overall thoughts on the match…
“I thought it was a good first half, and we threw a bit of a wrinkle at them this week in preparing in a different formation. I thought they handled it very well. It was an absolute group effort on both sides of the ball. We were dangerous and it was just a good night.”
On the performance of Jalen Robinson…
“I’ve seen this kid grow now for quite a while, and as he’ll tell you, it hasn’t been an easy road for him. For him to get out there and play the way he did tonight against some pretty accomplished forwards in this league is fun. For a coach, it’s a lot of fun to see him.”
On the importance of this home victory before a stretch of road games…
“It certainly makes these three points extremely important. Now, we have to switch our mentality a little bit. It’s still about moving forward and trusting in the process. Considering we have four away games over the next month, everybody’s going to have to do their part; I believe in our character, spirit and our soccer ability, and we’ll be fine.”
On the performance of Lamar Neagle…
“It was a great goal with great buildup; he had a good night on both ends of the field and it was good to see him score a great goal. The buildup on the second goal was great. We haven’t put together a back-to-front attack like that in a while, so that was encouraging and I’m looking forward to building off of this with the group that we played tonight.”
On his thoughts early in the match after a few opportunities for United…
“That was the rhetoric all week, being aggressive and making sure we’re pushing them and making them feel uncomfortable. That doesn’t happen by sitting back."
D.C. United defender, Jalen Robinson
On his first MLS start…
“It was a good 90 minutes for me. I don’t mind a performance like that, and it wasn’t just me, it was the team. I thought the team played well to go out and get a W at home. You make it a fortress, that’s the whole point, to make RFK a fortress, and I think this was a good start to do so.”
On whether playing in the Open Cup game helped him…
“It helps me build up partnerships with [Taylor Kemp], it helps me build up partnerships with Kofi and just all of the guys, so it was definitely a good warm-up for me.”
On his block of Kei Kamara’s shot late in the first half…
“You’re just supposed to cover your other defender, so pretty much I was just covering Kofi and fortunately I got a block on it.”
D.C. United defender Sean Franklin
On the importance of the result...
“We’ve got a pretty tough three or four weeks on the road so we knew we had to get three points tonight. Tonight was a great effort from the whole team.”
On the quick start...
“That’s the way we should play. We should be coming out flying and firing. That’s one of the things we talked about. We’re going to be on top of them from the whistle and that’s what we did and we played tough tonight and that’s one thing we haven’t consistently done. We haven’t come out and played tough from minute one. Tonight is something we need to carry on to the next game and I think when we do that it sets ourselves up to be successful.”
On the goal...
“I played the ball into Saborío and then kept running. He did a good job of holding it off and finding a great ball to Lamar. I just kept running into the box and Lamar hit a great cross in. They did all the hard work and my job is to put it in from there. If you miss from there that’s a problem and thankfully it just went right underneath the crossbar.”
On Jalen Robinson’s first MLS start...
“Jalen was big time tonight. He’s really grown up in the three years I’ve been here. To have him come in and get his first MLS start and play well and battle against the top leading goal scorer from last year (Kei Kamara). For that kid to do so well in his first start is great for us and great for his confidence. He’s a product of the academy and it was a well-deserved start and I thought he was man of the match to come in like that and play so well.”
New England Revolution Head Coach Jay Heaps
On his general thoughts of the match...
“Credit D.C. They punished us when we over extended ourselves. And they scored two goals. We gave them an inch and they took it. They were good enough to beat us on those two plays. Overall, just was not our best performance of the year for sure.”
On if there was a reason behind the team's performance...
“No. Obviously I feel like we had a good week in training. I feel like we had a good game plan. Unfortunately across the board we didn’t get in dangerous spots enough. Like I said we gave them a chance for a goal and they took it, and we were playing catch up. D.C. is really good; they know how to close out a game pretty well. They did it really well in Houston, and did it here on us. And we weren’t even extremely dangerous after they scored, which is extremely disappointing, I think the most. But in the end we got to roll up our sleeves and get back to work.”
On being prepared for the top 3 (Saborío, Espíndola, Acosta)…
“No, it didn’t take us by surprise. I think that we weren’t sure exactly what their injuries were like. Saborio missed and Espindola missed. If we had known they were going to be healthy we would have figured out a line up, or something similar to that. So we weren’t exactly sure from an injury standpoint, but we were prepared for those guys to play. In the end I think they did a good job of handling our attack. Credit to the center back Robinson, I thought he came in and did an excellent job. He had a tough task in Kai, he and Opare, we felt like we were going to get more and those two guys didn’t give us anything, so it was difficult for us”
On his frustration on being held scoreless when Birnbaum and Boswell are out of the lineup…
“I think so, yeah. I think we wanted to test the back line as best we could. I don’t feel like we did enough of that and we didn’t do that well, from everybody. I don’t think it’s one guy. It’s a combination of play, we didn’t get there enough. I thought second half we started to do a little bit better. It was way too easy for the center backs.”
On this being the last meeting between the Revolution and United...
“Good.”
On his frustration on how the season has gone…
“Absolutely. It’s disappointing. That’s this league. How you match up against a team. And that changes here and there. Unfortunately we just haven’t gotten it right. That’s on me and on the staff. But we should not be loosing two times and draw on that team. Unfortunately they have been better than us. They haven’t given us anything, we’ve given them things, but they are a good enough team to take advantage of that.”
On his center back situation…
“I thought our center backs were actually pretty good. London was there and formed a good partnership. There is a good balance. He’s athletic, he gets up. I have to go back and look at film and see the exact situation that came from the second goal. The run of play goal, and we’ll make an assessment and see what happened, but overall I thought the performance from the two of them was really good. We just have to continue to get better defensively on the road. I thought last week was a step forward, but unfortunately this is a little bit of a step backward.”
New England Revolution Goalkeeper Brad Knighton
On the difficulty of the game...
“It’s a tough place to come and play especially when you spot a team two goals. We knew it was going to be a very difficult game and they were very organized after they scored the first two and were very hard to break down.”
On the frustrating result and moving forward...
“The guys are frustrated. We’ve won three in a row so we’ve been in good form and we’ve been scoring goals. It’s one of those nights where something's not clicking. It’s unfortunate that it had to be tonight but we’ve got a quick turnaround and we’ve got a game on Wednesday that we’ve got to focus on now and all focus turns to that.”
On what went wrong during the game...
“They were just closing the gaps. We were finding it difficult to find spots. We controlled the game at times but we weren’t efficient enough in the attacking third. In this league that’s what it comes down to, you’ve got to finish your chances. They put two past us tonight, we’ve got to take it and move on to the next one.”
New England Defender, Andrew Farrell
On the disappointing result...
“Obviously it’s a result we didn’t want to give up. Especially with D.C. being behind us in points they jump us in the standings. It’s a quick turnaround we have a game Wednesday then Saturday we play a good Cosmos team then we go to Montreal. We’ve got to rest recover and get back it and get ready for the game on Wednesday.”
On the difficulty of playing D.C. United...
“They’re good team. Any team in the league is really good on any given day. Obviously were all getting paid to play soccer so it’s hard to go out and get a result against a team at home. D.C. United are solid defensively even with the guys that were missing. I think the young kid [Jalen] Robinson had a good game tonight. Without Boswell and Birnbaum, I think Opare did great and Franklin was great and they got a shutout. We obviously gave up two goals early and then didn’t have it. They were a good team and there’s nothing to say other than that but to move forward.”
