D.C. United Head Coach Ben Olsen
On the loss:
“I’ll look at myselffirst and our staff first, but we have to realize that that’s not good enough.Too many guys were on their own page today. We were cute all over the field. Wethought it was going to be enough to step out here and beat a team because theywere a little down on their luck. Maybe it’s a good thing because this reallydoes show us that we’re not as good as we think we are. All the little thingsthat got us success up and to this point – we forgot about tonight. There weresigns that we were forgetting about that over the last couple games and we havebeen squeaking by. Tonight we didn’t squeak by and it’s a good thing.
“I’m disappointed – Ilove the Open Cup. I wanted to go far in this tournament and I am gutted inthat respect. But, you know what, maybe it’s a good reminder to the players anda good reminder to myself that we need to get back to working hard and doingsome of the things that got us some success.”
On the U.S. Open Cup:
“Itwas a typical Open Cup game. The referees were lousy – they always are – forboth teams. Every Open Cup game, it just turns into an absolute circus. I don’tknow if that needs to be addressed or not. Maybe that’s the fun of the Open Cup– that its an absolute zoo every game. It gets old.
“Believeme – I’m not blaming the referees tonight, but it doesn’t help. At the end ofthe day, this game is a perfect reminder of what we can’t do, the attitude wecan’t come to a game with.
On Dwayne De Rosario’sabsence:
“Dwayne[De Rosario} and [Chris] Pontius are great players, but I have enough playersout there to beat Philadelphia. They [Philadelphia] were down and missingpieces too. They wanted it, they fought, and its just a poor overall executionfrom the team and myself.”
On the team’s defensiveperformance:
“Wewere riding our luck there for a while. The first half we should have gave up acouple. They had great chances. They had much more dangerous opportunities. Thelittle things we forgot about tonight. I don’t want to be dramatic, it’s theOpen Cup, but I like the Open Cup and I wanted to win the Open Cup.”
On any good takeaways fromthe game tonight:
“There’sa silver lining – it’s a good wakeup call. We’re not as good as we think weare.”
On looking ahead to thefuture:
“Ihave to get working harder, and the guys are certainly going to work harder.”
D.C. United Midfielder PerryKitchen
On the loss:
“Obviouslywe’re disappointed. Credit toPhiladelphia, they came out to play. We just didn’t match their intensity. A little bit of credit to us, we responded after they scoreda goal, but by that time it’s too late. They just wanted it more. Our last few games we were kind of dyingdown. This can end up being a goodthing for us because we have to realize that we aren’t where we want to be at,and if we don’t play well, we’re going to lose.”
On looking ahead to D.C.United’s next game against Philadelphia:
“It’sdefinitely going to be another hard fought match. And you know we’ll be ready for that one.”
On the hard-nosed aspect ofthe game:
“Imean, we knew it would be a dogfight. Sometimes the game gets like that, but you just have to respond and beready for the next one.”
D.C. United ForwardJosh Wolff
Overall thoughts onthe match:
“It wasn’t [the result we were looking for], it wasdisappointing in a lot of areas. We didn’t start particularly well and wedidn’t put together a lot of good soccer in the first half. Rightfully so, wewent down 1-0, but we were able to get right back into it after that, feelingprobably better than we should’ve felt. In the second half we couldn’t find ourrhythm very well tonight. We got some ideas on the ball, in the final third,but that’s what these Open Cup games are; it’s a do-or-die situation and bothteams put it on the line. They were able to make one more play in the end andthat gets them the win. It’s disappointing, but these are good competitions totest ourselves.”
On keeping the levelshown in MLS:
“In the League play we got some results in the last fewgames at home. I still don’t think we’ve played as well as we played some othergames, but we were able to play okay and get good results. There are stillthings we need to work on. We might not have deserved the win tonight, but wehoped to stay in it and sneak a goal like they did late in the game. It’scertainly eye opening, it allowed us to realize that we aren’t as good as wethought we were. Anyways, there are lots [of things] to work on. We are at thehalf point of the season, it’s disappointing to be out of the Open Cup, butthere’s plenty to continue to work on and I’m sure we’ll take a look at thevideo and get after it pretty quickly this week.”
D.C. United DefenderDaniel Woolard
On Philadelphia’sattitude:
“They kind of have been in a tough spot in MLS play. I don’tthink Peter [Nowak] has been happy with the way they’ve been playing, so theywere going to come out with a chip on their shoulder, wanting to provesomething. I think we got a little frustrated, we weren’t getting the looks wewanted, we didn’t play particularly well, so I think there is a little edge onboth sides.”
On Open Cup matches:
“It’s seems like Open Cup games are like that. When I waswith Chicago and [Cuhautemoc] Blanco got thrown out of the game, it seemsthat’s just what happens in Open Cup games. That’s because they are alwaystight, close games and it tends to happen that way.”
Philadelphia UnionHead Coach Peter Nowak
On the team’s workrate:
“We scored and to get the goal back we needed to do better.We always try to work on this in training. After you score a goal you cannotturn it off. This was very well received in the locker room. We made thenecessary changes and then actually the young kids put the play down to bringus the win.”
On playing theHarrisburg City Islanders in Open Cup play:
“It’s good, we play at home but in the latest edition of theCup there have been a lot of surprises. Harrisburg beat New England and nowthey beat New York. It’s still a very important game for us to move forward inthis tournament, especially playing at home.”
On Antoine Hoppenot:
“That’s why I have so many gray hairs. He was trying veryhard, he stretched defenders and he got the speed that allowed him to getbehind them and he got rewarded for it. It’s still a lot of work because at theend of the day you have to be able to sustain this physically, sustain thegame. It’s not 30 or 45 minutes that you play and all of a sudden you start tofade away. I think it’s important for him to understand that; the game doesn’tend when you score a goal. You have to work both ways, you have to use yourspeed and he’s good at this. We gave him a chance and I think he deserved toscore.”
