D.C. UNITED INTERIM HEAD COACH BEN OLSEN
I’m very very proud of those guys. I thought they fought extremely hard and I thought at times, we played some very good stuff. We didn’t do the most important thing which was to score some goals and that’s been a bit of a thorn all year. But my overall thought is that tonight was a good step. The way they battled and those guys are sick of losing and unfortunately we didn’t get rewarded again from, what I thought, was a pretty good performance.
We had pretty good chances, you put them in the net or you don’t and we didn’t.
I think that, for better or for worse, we use tonight as a fresh start. (It’s) something, I think, that the guys embraced and I think we saw some good energy out there. Again, in the end it’s very disappointing for the staff and the players because there was nothing at the end of the day but me saying that it was a good performance.
D.C. UNITED DEFENDER CAREY TALLEY:
I really feel that we should have walked out of here with a victory. If you look at our chances, especially compared to their really one chance, we paid for one mistake. It’s not often you see that in soccer, you see one mistake causing a team to lose … It just didn’t go our way tonight and that seems to be the theme right now. You know Pablo (Hernandez) had a few chances, had a couple of headers on goal that could have gone and tied it and maybe giving us momentum for the end, then Stephen King's shot and finally Adam Cristman’s header there at the end. Everything was just off by a hair. When things are not going right and you have to make your own luck, it really takes something powerful to do it. Tonight it just didn’t happen but I thought in terms of our effort and our coordination, we were more of a unit tonight and it’s a lot easier to fight when you know the guy next to you is fighting, too. We contested every play tonight and contested every ball and every play mattered and we gave up one on a silly free kick.
I would say it was heavy week for us and, if anything, it was more of a distraction. Ben (Olsen) and the rest of the coaching staff did what they could to rally the troops and say, “Here is what we are going to do tonight and here is how New England plays and that’s solely what we are concentrating on for the next four days.” We came in with a game plan and for the most part we executed and pressed higher up the field and it just didn’t go our way.
I think we can take something from (the game) because that’s something that hasn’t been there all year. I don’t think there have been many games that we’ve gone out, especially in a losing effort, and say that we worked together as a team. This was probably the first loss where we went in and fought as a team and every guy that came in and every guy on the field fought and we can’t say that every game.
D.C. UNITED FORWARD ADAM CRISTMAN
On our team, we are all out there fighting for each other trying to change things and change the habits we have been in. The fight was there. We played good soccer at times and we give up a goal off a set piece when we should be disciplined and organized. That’s frustrating because, in that first half, we had much of the play and better chances and had better creativity and it seemed that Matt Reis was their playmaker in the first half. We were just unlucky to give up a goal like that, in my opinion, against the run of play.
It was nice. It was a good reception. I made a lot of friends and the fans were really good to me here. It’s nice to play against your old team again and show the effort. It’s nice to feel a little appreciated in the time I spent here and it’s a real fun thing.
It was a perfect ball. it dropped on me a little but I have to take the chance better and be better with my head. It’s one of those where we my eyes got so big and I lost focus for a second. It’s one of those mistakes we have been plagued with all year.
