“Again, another game where we’ve got to put away our chances, and it’s an easy win. We were kicking it around the goal, some chances weren’t taken. Against a team like that, if you leave them hanging around, they’ve got enough dangerous players – we’ve seen them come back from deficits. They don’t quit; they’re a well-coached team. Tonight is very much a result of just not putting away chances to finish the game.”
On the team’s complacency following the early Kyle Beckerman goal:
“I think there was a bit of complacency – as we’ve seen already when we went up against Montreal. In soccer, it’s cliché that you can score a goal too early sometimes, and people tend to relax and get into some bad habits. In the first half, we were giving the ball away pretty cheaply, and I think that caused us some troubles and shifted the momentum.”
On Atlanta’s confidence after a 1-0 first half:
“I don’t think they would have had as much belief, going into the second half, if they had been down 2-0 or 3-0. They left three players high, and just tried to hit us with counterattacks. Unfortunately, we were around their goal fairly easily, but I didn’t think we made good decisions when we got there. Because of that, I think we were left a little exposed in our back.”
On how the team performed in a 120-minute match:
“All the substitutes that came on gave us a spark and a bit of energy as well. We’re really going to need it, especially in a game that’s 120 minutes long. We’re thankful for [their] contributions, and thankful for everyone tonight – they stuck with it, kept believing and kept working extremely hard. I think that this could be something of a momentum builder, if we take it the right way. We can look at it in the negative way and say that we shouldn’t have had to take it in extra time, or you can look at it in the positive way and say that that was a really difficult test for us to give away a goal late, then have to go into an overtime period of 30 minutes. It would have been easy to fold up shop and walk away with a loss, but we didn’t. We kept our chins up, worked really hard, and got the two goals to win the game.
On Devon Sandoval’s performance:
“I’d like to put a jar on him, because he was working extremely hard. I feel that he’d gone through a lull in the past couple of weeks, where his fitness level dropped a little bit, but tonight he proved me absolutely wrong. He worked extremely hard. When called upon in the first extra period, he played the midfield, and I think he did it quite admirably.”
On whether he was pleased with RSL’s overall performance in this Open Cup match:
“Yeah, I think I’m happy – not relief, per se. This is something to feel good about with the players, and with everything. I want to win this tournament, and I want it in the worst way.”
Real Salt Lake GK Josh Saunders
On the importance of winning the US Open Cup:
“Realistically every time you go out on the field you want to put your best effort forward, but especially in this competition where you are playing for a trophy. There’s prize money, there’s a trophy on the line, there’s bragging rights, there’s [CONCACAF] Champions League, there’s so much that goes along with this game.”
On the difficulty of staying focused when there is less action for the goalkeeper:
“Mentally you try and stay in the game as much as possible. You’re not trying to pick daisies. You yell at the players and whatever you can do to keep yourself in it because at any moment in time there could be a lapse and you’ve got to act.”
Real Salt Lake MF Kyle Beckerman
On his overall thoughts on the match:
“It was a little tougher than our usual Tuesday practice. It was a wild one; the weather came out of nowhere it seemed like. It made for a crazy game, but it was unbelievable that our fans came out like they did today and stayed until the end.”
On how Atlanta was able to get back into the game:
“Well, it’s the story of these games. Maybe their goalie played out of his mind, saving a lot of chances. Maybe we just didn’t finish good enough. It was probably a little bit of both. When you don’t finish, these teams start to get confidence. They feel like they’re hanging around and if they get a chance maybe they can make the upset.”
Real Salt Lake MF Khari Stephenson
On his game-clinching goal:
“Lovel [Palmer] crossed the ball and the defender tried to clear it. It came straight to me, and I took a touch to the right, got by a guy, and then hit it. It was a well-placed shot and it went in.”
On the mentality of the team that led to 2 quick goals:
“We never like losing. It’s a home game, and we never want to lose at home. Everyone tightened up the screws and came out hard and got the job done.”
Real Salt Lake FW Devon Sandoval
On his goal, assisted by Joao Plata:
“[Joao] Plata made a beautiful run and put in a beautiful ball to the near post. I had been making that run pretty much the whole game, and, finally, the ball got through to me. I was able to beat the defender to it, and I got my foot on it and put it away.”
On the field conditions and how they affect the team’s play:
“It was a little wet, but I thought that we did a good job controlling the ball and keeping it. I was pretty impressed by some of the passing that we were doing tonight.”
Real Salt Lake DF Carlos Salcedo
On playing with the first team:
“It feels good. There’s competition inside the group and I think that that’s good for us. We got the result today and I think that on Saturday we could have done better, but we got a point and we have to keep getting points away and at home.”
On handling Atlanta’s offense:
“We had to stay compact and let them play out wide. Again, in the last minutes, they scored, but at the end of the day we got the result and we have to keep working hard.”
Atlanta Silverbacks
Atlanta Silverbacks Head Coach Brian Haynes
On the team’s game plan:
“The game plan is to just play our game. We’re expected to lose as far as everybody is concerned, but I happen to believe in my players and I believe in the game plan we had. The early goal changed things, but we felt when we got into the game and started to pass the ball around, we did good things. We stuck to our plan and we were fortunate to get the goal right before the end of the game to push it into overtime.
On conceding an early goal:
“At first we were concerned with getting players behind the ball. The most important thing was to have enough men back. We wanted to defend first, and then hit them on the break. Once they scored, we had to change from that. Now we had to go chase the game a little bit.”
On his team’s halftime adjustment:
“After seeing some things we decided to get [Kyle] Beckerman off of the ball. We let things get out wide. [We wanted them to] beat us out wide because in the middle of the field, we couldn’t compete with [Javier] Morales and Beckerman. We got the ball wide and that’s how the goal came. From working it down the line wide, we got our goal.”
On GK’s Joe Nasco’s performance:
“Right after the first goal, the first big save he made was on [Devon] Sandoval. Those are the kind of saves that I try to remind my goalkeepers to make. [They should] make the saves you need to make, and make the ones to keep us in the game. He did it more than once. He kept a decent score line, and it’s a testament to how well my team can play. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m very proud of my team”
On the roles of his substitutes:
“I know [Rubén] Luna is a goal scorer. It’s amazing. He said it the week before, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t find that pass. I’m looking for that.’ And the pass to [Kellen] Gulley was the right pass. The fact that he hit it first time was great. If he takes a touch [Josh] Saunders saves it. While he was off balance, he couldn’t get both hands on it, and the deflection goes in. It’s really nice to see hard work pay off.”
On coaching against his former teammate Jason Kreis:
“It’s all friends. It’s a great camaraderie. Jason is a friend of mine and he always will be. It was nice to come up against him. It was hard to lose, but I understand.”
On moving forward:
“Hopefully this keeps us in first place. We need a couple of good results this weekend. It’s kind of a bar to see how we’ll do on that level. But I think we can play. We have four or five guys who can give us great results.”
Atlanta Silverbacks GK Joe Nasco
Thoughts about the team’s play:
“It took us a little bit to find our feet, with the wetness and everything like that but you know, coming in here everybody isn’t expecting us to do all that much against an MLS team but you know, we just kept our heads up and kept fighting and grinding. I am real proud of the team and real proud of the guys. Everyone dug deep and kept going. We got that goal and took it to overtime but unfortunately, other things happened.”
Reaction to the quick RSL goal:
“It really was just settling down and getting settled into the game. Usually the first 5-10 minutes of a game are jittery and I know the first kick I had was five feet off the ground. It just takes a little bit to get into the game and once we found our feet we weren’t all that worried about it. We were playing well and defending well and they could’ve come all night and we would’ve stopped them.”
On his goalkeeping performance:
“I felt pretty good about it, I was happy. I haven’t been playing all that great the past couple games and had this and that happen. I did what I needed to do to keep the team in the game and they did what they needed to do. I’m happy all the way around. Even though it was a loss, I am happy that we did well.”
