D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen
On Taylor’s performance…
“Taylor continues to get better with this club and puts consistent minutes in as an undervalued player for our team. I’m happy for him.”
On Nick DeLeon’s performance at right back…
“I thought he did well, especially for his first time putting a shift in where he had to defend against a pretty dynamic attack. There were some moments where he looked like a midfielder, but overall, the way he held the line, his understanding of when to drop and when to press were very sharp. His ability to win duels once a guy gets into his body was also pretty impressive, which we all have known. So as he gets more comfortable there defensively I think he will be even more effective.”
On what he thinks of this overall performance…
“Everybody brought their game on both sides of the ball tonight. If we do that in this league consistently, with the players we have, we can have success. But if one, or two, or three guys choose not to be at their peak performance it’s enough to lose a game. So, we’ll look to build off of that and make sure the urgency continues to stay high for each and every game here on out because we don’t have much of a choice.”
On the urgency now as the season is coming to a close…
“You hope to have the type of players and staff that when the games get more important they rise to the occasion. I think you saw a group of men out there that fought extremely hard and played well…and understood what it was going to take on both ends of the ball tonight. Offensively it was a strong performance but defensively the guys dug in and bailed each other out against a very dynamic Orlando team.”
D.C. United midfielder Julian Büscher
On the added pressure going into the game...
“These are the games that we play for and prepare for because everything is on the line. It was a big win for us. We had the right attitude. That helped carry us through the whole game.”
On the offensive attack tonight…
“We scored four goals. That’s always good. I think we used the transitions pretty well. We had stretches where we didn’t do so well, but that’s what we have to work on and prepare for against Columbus.”
On getting his first career MLS goal tonight…
“I get minutes, and every time I try to help the team. That’s all. It’s not up to me how many minutes I get. I try to do my best in practice, and when the opportunity comes, I’m ready. My girlfriend told me that I was going to score today, so that worked out. Maybe she’ll tell me every time. I’m happy about it. I’m happy about the goal, but more importantly, those three points. We move on, and now we need to get something from Columbus.”
D.C. United captain and defender Bobby Boswell
On the importance of three points…
“Yeah, this was important. I said earlier this week that we want to try and take care of business as early as we can. We don’t want to leave it until that last game at Orlando. We don’t want it to have to mean anything. It was a home game, and for us, it was important for us to score some goals. We wanted to keep the zero, but overall, I thought it was alright. There were some stretches which I’m sure we’ll watch in video and learn from but it’s a quick turnaround. Tonight was a good result. We’ve got to try and grow on this and keep jumping in the standings if we can. The more wins we get at home, the better-off we are and we won’t leave it to too many points on the road.”
On the impact of the crowd tonight…
“It’s a big week for the club. All week guys are doing things with the armed forces. Any time the house is packed, guys want to show the fans a good time. Fans seem like they’re always here; it’s not just tonight but you could definitely tell there was a bit of buzz about this game, and I think our guys performed accordingly.”
On Taylor Kemp growing into his role…
“He’s still growing. He’s got a lot of room for improvement but the strides he’s made since I’ve been here are huge. When I first joined the club, we really didn’t even consider him in the mix. He had three or four guys ahead of him. The fact that he’s kind of locked that down and is a two-way player in that regard, it’s great for him. There’s a lot of room to get even better than how he’s doing.”
D.C. United defender Taylor Kemp
On the first goal of the night…
“I thought [Mullins] was going to leave it. Not touch it at all. I kind of hesitated because I thought he was going to try to cut in and shoot. He does that a lot. He’s good at those back heels. When he had it, it’s a routine one where you just want to slam it across the face. Pat [Mullins] knows that. He knew to get there, and it was a good finish by him.”
On connecting with Patrick from their time at Maryland…
“I mean, Patrick [Mullins] is a good goal scorer. He gets himself in really good spots, even when we don’t find him. And he was like that in Maryland. With a guy like that in there, you kind of know that if you can just get the ball where it’s supposed to be, he’ll more often than not be there. He’s been great for us.”
On how special it is to have the fans and crowd here…
“That was huge. That gives us a big lift. It gives us extra motivation. We want the fans to be out here, so when they are, we want to put on a good show. We needed a win here for a lot of reasons, but seeing that crowd out there, I think it was our first sellout as far as I know. We pay attention to that. We know it going in, and we’re excited to play in front of a big crowd.”
Orlando City SC head coach Jason Kreis
On if the team has mental/physical characteristics to pull them out of this rut…
“I don’t have the answer to that, the players have the answer to that. It's really disappointing right now. The problem seems pretty obvious, you can’t allow 12 goals in three games. So we continue to work. We’ve been working defensively since I got here. I felt like we were moving in a very positive direction and things went drastically wrong in the last three matches but we will continue to work and press the players. We will continue to try and improve and do everything we can to give it our best shot.”
On what went wrong tonight…
“On the first goal, I have a very strong indication of what was wrong. The second goal I think was similar. It’s just about covering and shifting for each other. I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job of that. There’s too many gaps between our back four. We’re allowing goals too easily. From my point of view I think in every match that I’ve been here, the second half we’ve started very poorly. I don’t know what it is with the players. We talk about it, we talk about it at half time, we remind them but it seems like every second half they come out and need to be woken up. When you’ve given your second and third goal away it’s a little be late to be woken up.
On slow start to second halves…
“It’s something that we try to talk about as coaches to remind them but ultimately it’s on them to recognize when urgent situations are. Clearly right now the beginning of the second half is an urgent situation for us. We need to up the tempo, up our concentration, up our focus, up our effort level to make sure we’re not giving away two goals in ten minutes.”
On the three game losing streak…
“It’s about the details and right now we’ve been living a little bit on the edge and been on the wrong side of that. The players just aren’t quite getting the details done and when we do that we give away goal scoring chances and we’re getting punished for that. I think more so than anything else in my mind right now is how we’re coming out in matches. In the second half in particular. How I felt about the first half was that I thought it was very solid. We had one defensive lapse that leads to the goal and I thought we would be in a good place in the second half but you come out like we did in the second half you have no chance.”
On whether there’s a lack of leadership on the team…
“I think ultimately I’m the leader. I think it’s upon me and the coaching staff to do everything we can especially at half time to make sure that they’re ready to come out in the second half. So I look first and foremost at myself. Do I think that there’s a little bit of a lack of leadership problem on this team? Yes, it’s one of the things we identified before we came. I think that some of the guys have done a good job to step forward and take a little bit more of a vocal leadership role but we’re not quite getting enough of it yet.”
Orlando City SC defender Mikey Ambrose
On the game...
“I thought we worked very hard. Obviously it wasn’t a good result but we are just going to try to learn from it and put it behind us and look forward to Toronto.”
On playing D.C. again in a month and how to prepare…
“We’re just going to watch film and see where we made mistakes, try to improve on those areas and try to get three points.”
Orlando City SC defender Kevin Alston
On the game…
“Another tough one. We just really needed three points tonight and I think we started off well and it just kind of got away from us.”
On thoughts about the future…
“We just need to get better. We need to regroup after this game. We’ve got another tough game on the road in Toronto and we just have to put our best foot forward now. It’s make it or break it time. We have to get the results.”
