D.C. UNITED 4, NEW YORK RED BULLS 2
D.C. UNITED HEAD COACH TOM SOEHN
On the game:
"Since the start of the season I've always asked the guys to give 90 minutes and it's the first time we've gotten closer to pushing that bar. I thought we had a little gap in the first half, where we kind of petered out, but then give them credit - they came out and really re-established the game. I thought New York actually came out flat. Some of it was New York coming out flat, but a lot of it was us coming out with a lot of energy and really dictating the terms of the game."
On Boswell's red card:
"Obviously, you don't want to go shorthanded too often and use that as a motivation, but when Bobby got his second yellow I thought the guys really stepped up and even worked twice as hard."
On Ben Olsen's hat trick:
"I'm a little mad at him; I thought he could have had four or five. What do you to say about Benny? He's a warrior out there. We worked all weekend on getting the flanks involved and he scored three goals - what a performance he had."
On adjusting the team's formation with 10 men:
"I pushed him [Ben Olsen] back to cover. Benny's a smart player - he can read those situations and knows when to push forward and knows when to hold."
On the state of the field:
"It's the same for both teams. We're used to it, and we've done it for a couple years now. Part of it plays fantastic and then you have to deal with the [baseball] infield. But, they do a good job of laying it down, so sometimes it might not look as good as it is but it was fine."
On New York:
"They played more of a 4-5-1. They played with Clint [Mathis] up high, but then he ended up dropping because he couldn't find the ball. I give [Juan Pablo] Angel a lot of credit, he's a good athlete and he's caused a lot of ruckus, as far as winning at least the first ball - they just didn't have a second guy there to win it, and we did a good job of cleaning those situations up."
On Facundo Erpen's performance:
"I don't want to single anybody out, but I think as a team defensively we made it hard for them to play. And we used our defensive play to set up our attack and we won balls and looked to play forward. But spreading the field gave Christian room to move forward."
On Boswell's second yellow card:
"That's part of the game - sometimes you're going to get this, sometimes you're not. It's part of the game, you deal with it and you move on. In the end, it all evens out."
On Josh Gros' performance on Dane Richards:
"In the end, Richards didn't do a whole lot to cause us trouble. He's a fast guy, and Josh did a pretty good job. Josh still got into the attack. He set up the first goal with an early service and could have had one late, [but] Waterreus made a pretty good save on him."
On the six-game unbeaten streak:
"You always like to say you haven't lost, but I don't think that's a concern of ours. We're looking for consistency and when you have that consistency you win games and get your points. We said six games ago that we're going to get ourselves a little run and give the guys credit, they've done that. But, we keep building on what we're trying to do. Like I said, it's early in the year and we're still looking to improve and throughout the season several guys are going to see the field - different formations, whatever it takes we're going to continue to push the bar, and be a better soccer team."
On Luciano Emilio:
"You go through stretches - everybody does. All it takes is one sometimes. I wouldn't want him to heat up if I was someone else."
On playing without Boswell next week:
"We've got a week to work on it. We've brought in a lot of guys we trust to play in there and our team shouldn't skip a beat, we'll keep right back at it."
On if he's ever seen a team score two goals while down a man:
"Don't ask me memory questions. I only remember the really big ones we've won or the really bad ones we lost. I might remember this one though, Benny Olsen scoring three."
On playing Chicago next week:
"Chicago always plays us tough, and there's no layups in our league anymore. If you dictated the terms and go out and do the little things that we did today - hard work and being good with the ball - obviously youll increase your chances. That passion that I've asked for is there and when we have that we're a much better soccer team."
D.C. UNITED MIDFIELDER BEN OLSEN
On his third goal:
"The ball bounced up perfect and Jaime [Moreno] does a great job of having like five defenders on him, and my touch actually pops up a little bit, and I thought why not try my luck. I was feeling pretty good, struck it well and fortunately I caught him a little bit off his line, and that's it."
On the team's performance:
"It was a good game. A lot of the focus is going to be on me, but realistically the focus should be on the 90-minute performance from all the guys. Josh [Gros] played me a great ball, Christian Gomez played very well, Fred was very dangerous, Jaime was his usual self, and our defense held up pretty well against some pretty crafty players. I think it was the best game we?ve played this season and now we need to go forward."
On the Red Bulls' play:
"Let's be honest, I think they got a little tired. They seemed to die a little bit, physically."
On playing different positions:
"I've played a few different positions this year, and that's fine, and wherever I can dig in, I want to do that, I want to be on the field. So, I dig in and help the team in whatever way I possibly can. Usually, it's not your scoring guys doing that, but with all the other stuff, it seemed to be a lucky day for me."
On being down a man:
"We did well with it. They had a couple of chances that we did well with and we were a little fortunate, and when you counter on that we've got the guys who can do it. We've got Jaime, and Christian, Fred. Late in the game those guys know what to do when they're on a counter-attack. They're some of the best there is in this league. Again, overall it was a solid performance and that's important."
On the six-game unbeaten streak and where the team wants to be:
"It's a step in the right direction. They [N.Y.] weren't that great today. We can take out of it that we played great, but they were a little slow to the ball and slow to react. I think we should be happy with what we've done, but we got to move on. We have a Chicago team [next week], but this is a good place to start climbing back up to where we want to be in the standings."
On the rivalry and scoring against New York:
"I love playing against New York. I love the rivalry and each year it gets better and better; they're getting better and better. I don't know what the story is. I've had some goals there, but there are a lot of teams I haven't scored against. Dumb luck, I don't know."
On rarely scoring a goal with his head:
"No, I've scored some headers! I've got four or five! I've got a lot more headers than you think [laughter]! I've put a few back post. I probably have half of my goals with headers."
D.C. UNITED MIDFIELDER JOSH GROS
On whether or not this is the biggest win of the year:
"Yes, absolutely. We finally put a complete game together and got the result we needed."
On pushing forward after going a man down:
"Yeah, I didn't expect that at all. I thought we would just bunker in, but I think they threw so many guys forward we were able to counter-attack."
On setting up first goal and dictating the flow of the game:
"You have to realize that we've been struggling with crossing from the left side and getting chances like that and that opened up the whole game for us because they were worried about the outside, and Christian took care of it down the middle."
On Olsen:
"He was amazing today. He always plays tired and if there is anyone who deserves it, it's him."
D.C. UNITED DEFENDER BOBBY BOSWELL
On the team's offensive output:
"We tried to open the game up there; they were tired. We tried to throw numbers forward, counter on them and create good situations. We could have had more than we had."
On whether or not Olsen is a goal-scorer:
"Benny's a goal-scorer. He's a goal-scorer in my mind. He'll tell you: I don't know why you look so surprised, I do this all the time."
On his second yellow card:
"Like I said, I'm not happy with myself, but I'm very happy with how the team responded."
On whether or not it was the biggest win of the year:
"Yeah, definitely - they're our rivals and we have this unbeaten thing going on and to have the top team in the league come in here and beat them they way we did is great for us."
On the current position of the team:
"Like I said, I think we're taking steps forward, but we have a long way to go and we're not playing to our full potential. Tonight was a very big step for us, and now we just have to make sure we keep going in the right direction."
NEW YORK RED BULLS HEAD COACH BRUCE ARENA
On the game:
"I think it was a poor performance on our part. Maybe fatigue played a role maybe not. Whoever knows with these things. We looked like a tired team early in the second half. But, give D.C. United credit, they played well."
On whether or not traveling to three games in a week affected the team:
"That's what I just said - maybe, maybe not. It's the way it is. It's that way for everyone in the league at some point."
On United's ability to get behind their defense:
"[Because of] poor organization in the back. Poor midfield shape and I think just D.C. United outplayed us -- they worked harder."
On Ben Olsen:
"Great performace on his part. I think the players playing around him helped a little bit, but give Ben a lot of credit. He played very well."
On whether or not Ronald Waterreus played well:
"No, but maybe that's a mistake on my part by bringing him back to early. He has to get back in and that's the problem we have with a lot of players right now. We are trying to bring them in and put players back on the field. They're not in their best form and it shows. So, we are going to struggle for a couple of games until we get players back and obviously our back line is very disjointed with the injuries we have."
On what the team will work on over the next week:
"We're going to work on getting our team better like we do every week. Nothing different."
On Jozy Altidore:
"I thought Jozy did well. Maybe it was a mistake not starting him. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have started Jozy ahead of (Clint) Mathis and probably would have held Waterreus out another game."
On how helpful Juan Pablo Angel been in putting the ball in the back of the net:
"Good, he's doing well."
NEW YORK RED BULLS FORWARD JOZY ALTIDORE
On the game:
"We struggled towards the end. They got a red card and we should have dominated play. They had 10 men, but unfortunately we didn't win it for some odd reason and D.C. did."
On why the team didn't capitalize:
"That's what I'm saying - it just wasn't there for us, the effort wasn't there. They were strong on the pitch. When you have a man down you're supposed to attack more not defend more. It was not good for us."
On how much training he got in this week:
"It was tough. We didn't train much and on gameday it was a walk-through on what we were going to do for the game. But, that's life and we need to prepare ourselves better for games like this."
On whether or not there was a lack of organization:
"It was everything today. It was fatigue, organization - all that stuff. Some of it has to do with travel but we're not going to make excuses. We could have played better and especially when its our rivals. I thought it was a pretty big game and we would step up to that."
On what training will be like this week:
"It's going to be serious training sessions. We have to get prepared to play and go over there because Kansas City embarrassed us last week and we are only three points back from them."
NEW YORK RED BULLS MIDFIELDER CLAUDIO REYNA
On the game:
"[When] it comes down to it, even with the man up, we were just tired, leggy, and we just couldn't get going. I think a lot of the guys were saying after the game that for whatever reason, the three days of travel and it being our third game. They [D.C. United] deserve the win, they got the goals at the right time. It was just about when we were getting on top of them, we thought we were getting control of the game, they scored again and then it was the same thing. It was the third goal that was the killer. It was a hard third game after eight days traveling around. I think now it will be good for us to get back to a home game."
On whether or not he got to train this week:
"Not really. When you have games you don't train very much. It's just recovery, but I don't think there is really an excuse. When you lose, you lose, but looking at the team and looking around. When you see certain guys that just miss that step, you think everyone was a little tired. It's played its part and if they play well, they push the tempo a little bit. We controlled them quite well in the first half, but in the second half when they got that goal, I think we broke down mentally and phsyically."
On his nose:
"Yeah I broke it. Definitely, I knew right away. It was right after our first goal, I can remember. I headed it back and I hit the back of Brian Carroll's head and the next thing I looked up and we were celebrating. I was really and still am out of it. I have never really had a broken nose but I knew right away. The trainer said it was definitely broken, as you guys can probably see now. It was headache and light headache, I just felt really out of it. I just wanted to keep playing but it definitely affected the way I felt moving around."
On what the team needs to work on this week:
"Not to lose really any confidence. We lost to a good team, but I think it was more down to us not playing well. I don't think you have to change too much. We have pretty much everyone back now and we have a full strength squad of players to pick from. We need to get our feet back and our legs back. It will be good for us to have a home game [after] the traveling here, there and everywhere. It's been a hard week and now we will get to go back home so we can train and work hard. We need to get back to the basics. I think we made some little mistakes around the field both offensively and defensively. Defensively, we lost runners at times. We lost the ball too easily, going forward. We need to improve as a team. We have bounced back before from a tough defeat against Kansas City, at Toronto. We have the experience and the quality. We're not a bad team overnight. We still feel like we have the ability. We just have to play better, that's all."
On trying to get the ball to Angel:
"We were trying to get Clint [Mathis] a little closer to him. They did a good job. It was quite difficult to find him in the right spots. He still scored a goal for us and was dangerous and creative for us. We got a lot of crosses in in the first half, especially from Dane Richards, but they marked him really well. They were aggressive. They have been watching him play so they knew to be all over him."
NEW YORK RED BULLS FORWARD JUAN PABLO ANGEL
On the game:
"There are no excuses. We can't make any excuses that we played three games [this week]. You have to cope with those situations during the course of the season. I think overall we were second-best today. We fell to D.C. because they basically were more creative and they converted the situations that they created."
On the effectiveness of his pairing with Clint Mathis:
"Yeah, I didn't feel comfortable today in general. I think in general the team didn't feel comfortable during the course of the game. We didn't pass the ball as well as we normally do. We weren't creative at all and we made mistakes at the end that they took. It's difficult to come back when you concede that many goals away from home, but we have to keep working and keep going."
