United head coach Ben Olsen
On winning after losing three consecutive matches…
“Belief is always shaken whenever you go through a stretch like that. It’s always difficult so I’m proud of the guys and how they held on. I don’t care how we do it; getting three points going cross-country is difficult. I’m looking forward to getting to Seattle, taking a flight to Orlando and grabbing something out of there.”
On Hamid’s talents…
"It’s nice to have a guy who can bail you out; whether that’s a midfielder, forward, or in our case, a goalkeeper. He saves us points and he’s similar to some of these dynamic forwards and wingers who get points out of nothing.”
On the late penalty…
“Bill [Hamid] got a pretty good piece of Brek [Shea]. Whether it’s a natural goalkeeper play on the ball or a penalty, they needed the linesman to talk the referee into the call."
United midfielder Jared Jeffrey
On what the win means...
“It means a lot. We’ve been on a slide lately. And I think we really circled the wagons and really stuck together and grinded one out there for us. It was big.”
On message from coaches going in...
“Stick together obviously. We worked a lot this week on being a little bit more composed on the ball. I thought we had some spells this game where we did connect some passes in the first half and early in the second. But you know, the message was ‘Don’t panic, we’re fine. We’ll be alright if we keep playing hard.’ And I think we showed that a little bit today.”
On maintaining focus...
“It’s a really big field so you’ve got to be smart picking your moments. I though the game was back and forth and I think the message for us was just ‘stay compact’ in whatever we were doing. I thought we did a really good job in the second half of doing that, staying patient defensively and not getting exposed as much as we could have and, you know, it’s a great result for us.”
On building off the win...
“Well we’ve got a game in three days so hopefully we can keep the momentum rolling a little bit but you know, each game is different. I think we just have to keep the same mindset and keep fighting and keep gathering points as much as we can.”
United midfielder Lamar Neagle
On what the win means...
“[It's] huge. We just came off three bad games at home so to get one away, hopefully we can turn things around and hopefully this is the start.”
On message from coaches going in...
“Just to work together. The last few games...it’s been so stagnant offensively and defensively and to start moving and to start working for each other. If we don’t do that, then we have no chance.”
On the penalty kick goal...
“[I] just needed to concentrate on hitting it hard. [Ousted's] a good goalkeeper and I knew there was a chance he was going to guess the right way. He did, unfortunately for me. But luckily I hit it clean enough that he couldn’t get to it.”
Vancouver head coach Carl Robinson
Thoughts on the two penalty calls...
“I haven’t seen our penalty, I’ve seen their penalty. It’s an awful call and it’s had a major impact on the game. Usually I don’t say or criticise anything that officials do because they have a hard enough job, but this official seems to cost us a lot. So it’s unfortunate. We should score one of our chances. I think D.C. United came with a game plan tonight to try to get a point, and they were gifted three by a wrong call. I could say it’s ok, it’s not ok. Because we’re talking about professional sports now. So it’s not ok.”
On the chances missed...
“It wasn’t our day. Sometimes the soccer gods don’t look out for you, and today was that day. And I had a feeling in the first half when we hit the post and the bar and missed one or two good chances. Bill’s a good goalie, we know that, arguably one of the best in the league and he’d come up big for them today. But we’re disappointed we missed a number of chances. But when you miss a number of chances and calls are made correctly, you draw the game nil-nil.”
On if a draw would have been deserved...
“It wouldn’t have been right, no. We should have got three points, we have to accept that. But we missed out opportunities and D.C. United too their one gift that they had. Credit to Benny [Olsen] and D.C. coming here in a tough environment, handled it very well, slowed the game down, managed it very well once they went one-nil ahead as well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Benny and their team. They’ve been o a difficult run, but they managed to get it.”
Vancouver goalkeeper David Ousted
Thoughts on both penalty calls on either end...
‘‘It’s tough. I think there’s a lot of penalty calls in this league. I’ll have to watch it again to comment on anything. I don’t want to comment too much or too little. I’ll just say that I’ll have to watch it again before I give you guys my opinion.’’
Thoughts on the match...
‘‘Honestly, we created the chances we needed today. We had them but just didn’t take them. And when you don’t take them, you let teams in the game. And D.C. did well to hang on and got their goal off a penalty. And at the end of the day, if you don’t take your chances, it’s going to be hard to win games. But on a positive side, we created a bunch of chances. We had three or four off a crossbar and listen, if two or three of those go in and we’re talking about something else here.’’
On Bill Hamid...
‘‘He played well tonight and I told him after the game as well. He’s a big reason why they got three points from here. You’re standing there at the other end trying to be ready if it goes the other way and just hoping that we sneak one by in but tonight wasn’t the night.’’
Vancouver defender Shaenon Williams
Thoughts on the match...
‘‘Crazy game. I thought we were the better team. You know, giving up a PK. It happens. It’s not on any one guy. It’s a team loss and we’ll take that and we’ll get better.’’
On the D.C. penalty kick...
‘‘When you look back at it, it’s not a PK. People make mistakes, we move on. To be honest, it’s not us. We should have been up 3-0 at that point and we have to do better in front of goal. We have to put teams away when we have the chance and then we don’t run into things like that.’’
On positives...
‘‘Listen, we dominated them. I mean, we barely let them out of their own half. I don’t even think they had a chance maybe but the one shot in the first half that David saves. We hit the bar, hit the crossbar, crossbar again, crossbar again, hit the post on a PK. Some days it’s just not your day and today wasn’t our day. We know that we definitely gave one away today and we’re going to be chasing through points next week.’’
