New England Revolution Head Coach Jay Heaps
On regaining the lead shortly following the tying goal:
Coach Heaps: “It was a big moment for us because really, we were so disappointed that goal went through. It was basically a comedy of errors, in terms of how we rushed to the ball on a goal kick. It fell down. We had four or five chances to clear it. I’ve already seen the play and I can’t believe it was alive for as long as it was, but I love that we just responded well. We’ve had a pretty tough week, in terms of putting our head down. I like that we talked a lot about it Sunday and Monday about having a response tonight and I think our guys really did that. We came out and used a moment when u get knocked down, to get back up.”
On what it means to be one game away from a berth in the CONCACAF Champions League:
Coach Heaps: “When you draw up the beginning of the year, you want to do well in the Open Cup. You want to blend yourself to a point where you can get to a situation where you can play in a semi-final and a final. It does not take away from what we want to do in the league, for sure. I think the Open Cup is a great tournament, but you have to put it in perspective with the rest of the league. You can’t just set out to win that tournament alone. You got to make sure that we still use this as a good platform for the rest of the year for us. We had some much better moments tonight, in terms of our movement and our key stuff in the first half. I thought we were unfortunate not to be up more before they scored their goal. So, we got to use it as a good platform to move forward for the rest of the season.”
On whether or not he felt the second goal was coming:
Coach Heaps: “It was. Not after they scored. I thought it was coming before they scored. And then when they scored, there’s definitely a little bit of a letdown, but I saw a good response from our guys. Right away, there was two or three really sharp passes. We worked ourselves down for the corner. Obviously, when we work on set pieces, that was one that we worked on a little bit this week. You love it when the guys get on the field and deliver on a set piece.”
On the play of Kei Kamara:
Coach Heaps: “I thought he was great. I thought Kei did a lot of work for us. He held the ball, he was dangerous, he was creative. He was unfortunate not to get a goal from the run of play. I think he was close. Even the one where Kelyn [Rowe] laid it back across, it looked like Teal [Bunbury] just got his nose on it, where I think Kei was probably in a better angle. I thought Kei was great from start to finish and that’s what we needed tonight in the semifinal.”
On Je-Vaughn Watson’s recent run of play:
Coach Heaps: “Well, he’s hungry. He likes the ball. He’s dangerous and he never stops moving in the box. That’s the important thing. He’s not just waiting for the first service he’s reading. Those are the ones people stop on. He just keeps going.”
On what it would mean to the Revolution to add another trophy:
Coach Heaps: “It would be great. I think it’s something that we want to do, but I’d love to do like we did in ’07. We were sputtering a little bit in ’07 and we made it to the Open Cup Final and then we went on to the MLS Cup Final and had a real chance to win that, up 1-0. So, I’d like to use this platform. This is very similar. It gets us out of a little bit of a funk to get us back in and believing in each other the right way and working for each other the right way so that we can do a lot better than we have been the last couple weeks.”
On the difference between being a player and a coach during the Open Cup run:
Coach Heaps: “We blended a lot of the lineup to get here. I think that this is one of our deeper teams. We don’t have thirty guys, but we have, I would say, players one to sixteen or seventeen, maybe even eighteen, that could be starters at any different time. So that’s why I think we’ve been able to go further than we have in the past. The philosophy hasn’t changed at all. You have to blend the lineups the right way because the games come so quickly. The Open Cup games, early rounds, come in the middle of our schedule. So we have to make sure that we’re blending it. Now when you get closer to the games of the semifinals or finals, you got to give everything you have for it.”
On Je-Vaughn Watson playing centerback:
Coach Heaps: “It’s a position that Je-Vaughn plays well. Going into this game, I thought London [Woodberry] good in a good shift the other night in Toronto. We also want to have fresh legs. Je-Vaughn was coming off a lot of games, so we knew he’d be ready for tonight.”
On Lee Nguyen coming off the bench:
Coach Heaps: “It’s a lot of games, a lot of minutes, a lot of pressure on him to do things. So I thought tonight, see if he could see it from a different angle and get himself in the game. You watch the game first and see it a little bit different and see how he can go in and help us. We scored a goal with him in there.”
On the coming together of David Accam and Kelyn Rowe and Rowe’s recent reactions:
Coach Heaps: “I think they’re different scenarios. The one in Toronto, we’ve shown it and talked to Kelyn about it. It was a clear foul. Even the referees, everyone has admitted it’s a foul. The problem is, it wasn’t called so you just got to play through it. His reaction in that moment, especially where it was on the field, you just got to finish the play. The one in this [match], I was happy that Teal [Bunbury] came and got in because I think Kelyn was hot. Kelyn, just talking to him right now, thought that was a pretty egregious tackle and thought that his ankle moved a little bit on that one. When you’re a player and you know someone gets you pretty good, you lose your head. And I thought Teal did an awesome job of grabbing him because that was important that someone got to him.”
On Kelyn Rowe playing in the middle of the midfield:
Coach Heaps: “I thought Kelyn was excellent tonight. I thought he and Diego [Fagundez] found the game really well in the first half. I think as the game went on, it wasn’t as crisp, but the first thirty-five minutes, I thought was excellent from our guys, moving in and out, looking like the team we want to be.”
New England Revolution Midfielder Teal Bunbury
On how it feels to be heading to the Open Cup final:
Bunbury: “It feels great. Whenever you can make a final, it’s huge. Credit to all the guys, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of different types of games throughout the tournament, and I’m just pleased that we were able to make it to this point. It was a great victory tonight and we’re very excited.”
On what he feels they can take from this game and implement in their MLS play:
Bunbury: “I think we’re going to—we have a couple more days now to prepare for Philly, but I think tonight we’re going to enjoy that we’re going to be making it to the final. But there’s a lot of things we can take from this game. Obviously, winning is huge, playing at home, moving the ball around well. Defensively, we were in great shape, so there’s a lot of good things and there’s still some things that we need to work on, and moving forward, that’s what we’re going to focus on.”
On his goal in the 85th minute:
Bunbury: “I mean, whenever you score, it’s great, but the biggest thing is winning the game. We all want to win here. That’s why you play this sport. You want to win games. Whether you’re scoring, assisting, working hard defensively, making big time games, you want to win, you want to advance and win the Open Cup. That’s what it comes down to. Now we’re going to be in a final and credit to all the guys and all the support to our fans throughout this whole season. It’s kind of been an up and down season, but we’re going to a final and that’s important.”
On the importance of the team getting a third goal to finish off the game:
Bunbury: “I think it’s huge. Chicago was kind of putting some pressure on us. When it gets late into games like that, you tend to kind of sit back and try to just hold on to a 2-1 lead. So, to kind of extend that and get that third goal was huge for us, and it was a lot of work from a lot of guys, and I think we deserved that 3-1 win.”
On the importance of the timing of Je-Vaughn Watson’s goal after Chicago equalized:
Bunbury: “That was huge. I mean, they scored a nice goal. I feel like we had all the possession, we had all the chances. They didn’t really have too much, and, you know, we were caught, they scored a goal, but for us to bounce back like that was huge for us, so very important.”
On what he saw when he came in to separate Kelyn Rowe from David Accam:
Bunbury: “I just didn’t want it to get out of hand. I didn’t want Kel [Kelyn Rowe] to get into a situation where the referee could somehow give him a red card and then he’s missing the final. I didn’t want any stupidity to happen and just try to calm the situation.”
On what making it to the Open Cup final means to him personally, in light of how much emphasis the team put on the Open Cup this year:
Bunbury: “It’s just—it’s huge. We don’t really care what other teams put emphasis on the Open Cup. For us, it’s a chance to win a championship, a chance to win a trophy, and that’s what guys play for. It’s to win championships for our team, for our organization, for our fans. For us, it’s huge.”
New England Revolution Defender Je-Vaughn Watson
On his game-winning goal:
Watson: “A direct kick exactly to you—you’re going to try to find a way to get on the end of stuff. We practiced that in the training, and then the coach—it was a training pitch, playing Kei [Kamara], flick it on, and I was in the box, so I just move towards the keeper and, like, I feel it coming, so I decide I’m just going to run for it. It just fall for me, and I just finish it.”
On scoring his third goal in his last five appearances:
Watson: “Yeah, you know, I’m in the zone. You got to do whatever you have to do. If I can’t get it far away to hit it, I’m going to try to come closer, and which one you rather get in: closer there or far away? I like to get it close to finish it.”
On whether or not he predicted a goal tonight:
Watson: “Yeah, because we were talking earlier, me and Steve Neumann, and he was saying, ‘Just keep on, keep on [indecipherable],” and he was saying, ‘You know, Chicago, scored against them the last time,” so whatever, I’m going to go for it. You know like, when you’re in a good spot like that, and you thought about it just to finish it, and before I top it in the goal, I was saying, ‘oh my God, it’s a goal again’.”
On whether or not he tries to move around a lot on set pieces to create chances:
Watson: “Yeah, I do that because I’m playing for other teams, like, you know you’re tall, so guys are going to pinpoint, mark you, but if you move a lot, you’re going to get chances. When you’re playing with a guy like Kei [Kamara], a lot of guys are always tagging him, like two guys, so if I move after him, I’m going to get chances.”
On how big it was to score a goal after the equalizer:
Watson: “Yeah, because we were all over them, so it come at the right time because it was a thing that we practiced. As soon as you see Chris [Tierney] go over the ball, you know it’s going to come over, so as I tell you before, Chris [Tierney] ball fell at the penalty spot, so I just thought, I’m just always going to stand there, so just drop for me, I just finish it off.”
On whether or not he was surprised to see the header back across:
Watson: “Yeah, because the thing is, you know when you’re in the box, wherever it goes, you’re going to find it. So, I was like, I’m going to sprint towards the goalie because normally I don’t really go so close, but I’m saying, Kei [Kamara] is going to hit it on target any day—any flick off, I’m going to get it, so as soon as it’s drop, the keeper’s coming, I put it on the other side. I thank him anyway for just giving me the assist.”
On whether or not he will watch any other team’s Open Cup semifinals Wednesday night:
Watson: “I don’t think so, but it’s whatever. You know, I come here to win trophies, and wherever we’re going, I’m going to go there to win because it’s the first [time] I’ve been in a final and I want to win something for the club because it’s a good club, good organization, so I want to win something.”
On what it was like to pair with José Gonçalves:
Watson: “It was good. You know, we’re a professional soccer player, don’t care where they put us, we’re going to play. I just try to play to my strength, passing out the ball, sprinting down the fast guys, not doing any risk in the back. That’s what the coach put me there to do, and I just did the work.”
Chicago Head Coach Veljko Paunovic
Opening Statement:
Coach Paunovic: “First I would like to thank our supporters, section eight, and sector Latino who came here to support us and how they handled this hard result and elimination from the Open Cup. For us, it’s a disappointment and it’s very hard. The whole locker room feels very, very bad at this point. I also want to congratulate the New England Revolution for the good game, for the win, and for reaching the finals and we wish them all the best.”
On the difficult swing to the second half:
Coach Paunovic: “I would like to add that we did our best. This is the best we can do at this point, but we will work hard and we will come back next year. We believe being a better team and more competitive and most of all, we want to have another final and play to win. I think about today’s game, the second half was much better. We still have the issue that once we concede a goal, we start to play the way we want to play. We feel a relief of having the negative result, so now it’s actually when we react. We want to be the team that is more, who imposes his style, but still we are working on that we are not ready to do and play that kind of soccer. The second half was the same thing. After the second goal and the third goal, we pushed hard, we tried to do some adjustments, but the team, I’m really proud of our guys. I think our team did a huge effort and, as I said, this is the best we can do at this point and we learn from everything. It was a great experience for us and we just expect and we work on improving and not making the same mistakes in the future.”
On the referee granting the Revolution a penalty kick in the first half:
Coach Paunovic: “I think it was for sure an important moment of the game. I can tell you we never comment on officiating. I didn’t see the play. For us, for sure it was tough to receive that first goal too early and too innocent. I think we have to be honest, we are a young team and we commit too many innocent mistakes, which I always address with our staff and locker room and it’s something that we’re aware of it, but we have to grow up. We have to grow up in this league and this competition just doesn’t give you too much time for that. You have to react in the next game and I think the pace of the competition and the pace of how well we grow, it’s not the same pace. I think we are behind, but that’s the part of the process.”
On the plan to improve from the team’s match against New England two weeks ago…
Coach Paunovic: “Basically, the whole plan a couple of weeks ago was working. As I said, where we are, this is the best we can play at this point. It was important for us to keep the clean sheet at least for the first half and then try to win the game in the second, but it was too easy and I think we learned from the last game. For me, it’s just a matter of growth of the team that we have now and what point we are right now.”
On David Accam’s red card:
Coach Paunovic: “It’s soccer. On the field, things happen that you can’t always be aware. I have no comments. I understand it, I will review it, I will address it with David [Accam], and if there is anything to address, that’s it. I insist I didn’t see the play.”
Chicago Fire Forward David Accam
On if it was frustrating to lose in the Semifinal Round:
Accam: “I think so, a little bit. We just tried to win the ball and push a little bit harder and at the end, I just made a silly mistake.”
On if there are any lessons to be learned from the Open Cup run:
Accam: “For me, the guys showed a lot of passion, but today we weren’t good enough and for us, we need to learn how to start games earlier. We didn’t do that. We sat back and they put pressure on us and that dictates the game for us which isn’t good. So next time, we need to dictate the game.”
On how they change the way play is dictated:
Accam: “Just our confidence on the ball and I think it’s just the simple things we need to do more.”
On the equalizing goal he scored:
Accam: “I was composed when I got the ball. They thought I was going to shoot, but then I faked it and I just toe poked it into the side corner.”
