D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen
On the outcome…
“The way we play always stems from the base. Having fight, having more energy, having the right mentality about the game…that’s what we had today. Up until this point, there’s been some good halves and some good encouraging play. We are evolving to the team we expected we'd be. But part of this is still about winning games and we talked about that this week: about character and grit. You need those intangibles to win games and I think you saw that, you saw our team use emotion within what we were trying to do.”
On being pleased with the effort…
“I’m pleased, but the message is that this is what we can do. But, we can’t wait until it’s New York in a packed house and a week after a loss. That needs to be the standard. It’s a difficult thing to achieve each week in this league, I understand that, and it’s not all on them necessarily, it’s on me too. I have to keep as high of a standard as possible each game.”
On the pressure and keeping balls alive for second chances...
“The game dictates how you press. If you’re in a good spot and up the field, you might as well stay in and try to win the ball quickly. I thought we did a good job with our collective defending. When we dropped off I thought we did well and we defended the box well tonight. For the most part we pressed together. I thought there was a fifteen-minute span in the first half where we were too easy and too loose on the backs…Dax was then connecting with Sasha and putting our back four under a lot of stress and the man next to me [Travis Worra] bailed us out one or twice; and his performance tonight will be understated in this whole deal.”
On Travis’s crucial saves…
“I thought they were huge. The game is still about moments, and [Travis] kept us in the game and held the lead in the first half. I think in the second half, the way we dealt with them defensively was very good and we were unlucky not to get the third, but he did a good job in there.”
D.C. United goalkeeper Travis Worra
On his thoughts after the saves…
“As a goalkeeper when I make a good save, honestly I don’t even recognize it. My number one priority is keeping the ball out of the net. But with both of them, I gave up rebounds. The first thing on my mind is: 'Ok, where’s the ball?' and making sure the second one isn’t getting passed me.”
On his mentality after being the starter for two months now…
“Day in and day out, even in training, its baby-steps every day. I try not to look big picture. I take it one day at a time.”
On Bill coming back from injury…
“I go in and I compete every day in training. The most important thing is that when my name is called I go out and help the team in getting three points.”
D.C. United midfielder Patrick Nyarko
On the overall result…
“That was the game plan. It was more about stopping them first because they are real good soccer players. You give them a little rhythm and they will boss you around. They’ll pass it and they’ll create chances, so the game plan was to just jump on them right away and get the midfield three off the ball as much as possible. I think the guys came out and stopped their game plan.”
On the team’s defending and rhythm…
“We pride ourselves on defending well first and we defend and attack together, so once we got them off of their rhythm and won balls, we could break and go forward. I think that’s one of our best attributes, just to break and go forward and we executed that well. A few chances went by, but in the first half we were perfect and in the second half we were just trying to see the game on.”
On his pass to set up the first goal…
“I passed the ball, squared it out and took a touch and just saw their defensive line come up. I made eye contact with Marcelo right away and after that, I knew exactly where to put that ball and he made a great run; he beat the offside trap and had a great pullback. It was all him making that eye contact and me knowing where he was going to go.”
On the differences between tonight’s performance and past performances…
“Maybe we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves and just being inconsistent. A third of the season has gone by, but this is the time that teams usually get that rhythm, intensity and discover their identities and hopefully we’ve discovered ours now. We cannot afford to be inconsistent and this is how we need to play game in and game out, win, lose or draw. This is the output we need on the field and the rest will take care of itself.”
Sean Franklin Comments
On the outcome...
"It’s a rivalry; they're a team that we hate and they hate us. It was a good game for us to play tonight to bounce back after a 2-0 loss to NYCFC. It was just a good performance. We talked about how we can’t be giving up points at home and that we needed a statement game and I think tonight was the perfect night for it."
On the Red Bulls' play...
"I thought at times, they still played well through the middle, but once we got around Felipe, Sascha [Kljestan] and Dax [McCarty], we made it difficult for them at times and that was a big part of our game plan. It’s just nice to not only win at our home field but to get a shutout."
New York Red Bulls head coach Jesse Marsch
On the formation change...
"We felt like we could gain advantages and be dangerous getting after their backline but we weren’t able to do that."
On Luciano Acosta's impact...
"He was active in finding little pockets and it wound up being a problem because we gave the ball away in the midfield over and over again, which meant their first pass could go to him and he could start putting plays together."
On the early substitution...
"If I go into that, I would say that I have to take a big load of responsibility. We came into a rivalry game, one that we knew would require a team that was always up for the competition and for the night and we came up zero for eleven on that. So, you have to look at me and say for whatever reason I didn’t have enough urgency and preparation for this and didn’t make it clear to them exactly what this was going to require. So, I felt as though I could have made a bunch of subs before the half, in the 20th, 30th minute. We were so flat and again that’s all on me."
On another different backline...
"Again, it’s another backline. We’ve had a lot of them this year and it’s been hard to solidify that four and those relationships. That being said, that wasn’t the direct problem for tonight. I think it was more about mentality and being outcompeted."
New York Red Bulls forward Mike Grella
On the overall result…
“Yeah, it was just an unprofessional performance by us. I don’t think we kept our level of intensity that we had over the last few weeks. I don’t think we did that for whatever reason and it was a poor performance and a poor result.”
On acclimating to the lineup changes…
“No excuses for this entire group. We win together, lose together and have good performances and bad performances together, so there are no excuses. We were not right in any department tonight and the result was deserved.”
On moving forward…
“You’ve got to turn the page and move forward. We’ve got to learn from our mistakes here and make sure we never come out and put on a performance like this again. There’s no choice but to turn the page and get ready for Wednesday, because in this league, there are a lot of points up for grabs; we need to keep working hard, learn from our mistakes here tonight, but make sure we turn the page and stay positive.”
