Dash interim head coach Juan Carlos Amorós
(on today's win) "Today, the main thing we showed is the character and competitiveness we want. Obviously, the game didn't start the way we wanted, going behind, but the reaction from the team, the football we play, showed that we could go against the environment, away from home to get the result. The main thing today was the character of the team, which they showed today on the pitch. It was outstanding, and they were able to play moments of brilliant football, so very pleased."
(on the team's performance) "I'm extremely happy, because we had a game plan, and we knew what we wanted to do and how we wanted to play, trying to impose our football principles. When you go one-nil down, sometime it makes you hesitate, but the players didn't; they stuck to it. The goal came from a corner that we worked on, we knew that crossing was something we wanted to exploit, and we did that fantastically well. The third goal was fantastic, what a goal for Sophie (Schmidt), which was outstanding. We want the players to be able to express themselves when it comes to those situations. The penalty was after the 1v1, so they were already close in time. It's all the stuff that we work on, so I'm extremely happy with how the players stuck to the game plan. I believe that if they express themselves on the pitch in a coordinated way, we will win."
(on his comfort with the squad) "I'm extremely happy with the group of players and people that we have is showing what we are capable of. I keep telling them that this is not the limit of what we can do; if we keep working on how we are doing it, we can keep growing. I'm very pleased with the international players that came back on, the players that stayed at home and the players on the bench. What makes this team win is not only the 11 that play, but everyone that participates and competes every day at training. Training has been fantastic, and they are showing up for games like today."
(on his first road victory) "This is a league where it is very transitional, it is a big risk when you try to be an offensive team that presses higher up the pitch. If you leave space in the back it can hurt you in those situations, so that's something that we will look at. Football is football, it's 11 players against 11 players. If you understand the strengths of your team and know what you want to get from them, try to focus on what you do. It is a formula that you should win when you have players of the quality we have because the performance of the quality that we have shown with the team is outstanding."
Dash Midfielder Shea Groom
(on today's game) “It was just a totally different response than some of the games we've had in the past. Over the last three years that I've been here, getting scored on early is just a hard hole to come out of. Our response tonight was great. (Gotham’s first goal) was an error. We'll look back on that and get better, but the team response was great. The difference this year has just been, we have a lot of people that can score and we're doing it often. It just feels really organized. Just the response to that, first of all, going one-nil down three minutes in was huge for us.”
(on finishing the weekend in third place) “It's huge, last year was probably one of the hardest (seasons) to swallow, to be so close to the playoffs. To miss it by one point, to have three, four games to just get a point was just a lot of pressure and something that you don't want to have to do. We've been good about getting points early and making sure that people understand that we're not just going to be an easy game and to do it consistently. So, I feel really confident with where we're at, you know, sometimes teams peak a little bit too early. I feel like we're still in a really good place. We still have room to grow. So, it's a crucial part of the season to try to break away from some of these other teams.Obviously, it's going to be a brutal schedule. So, we're going to have to do everything we can and use every player that we have to get through these games and get as many points as possible.”
(on her goal today) “Yeah, I had a couple of people actually come up to me after the game and the other coach saying, ‘no, that's just a classic Shea Groom goal.’ For me, I think that's where I feel most comfortable, hitting the ball into the goal. Maria (Sanchez) has given me opportunities since she's been here. So just love that connection. We knew that was a place that we could expose them, on crossing and just finishing those chances. So that was huge. Again, to come back and score two goals. Being down 1-0 was was huge for us in the first half.”
(on the response of the team) “It's just building our confidence, I think slowly, but surely we're starting to see and actually believe that we're not just a team that gets lucky and grits out wins. We're a team that comes in and we score four, five goals a game. We are hard competitors to compete against. Good to grow our confidence. I feel like we're in a really, really good position, not too comfortable. Juan (Carlos Amoros) does a great job of humbling us and letting us know that it's not over, it's not over. We enjoy our wins and we get back on Monday, and we prepare for the next game. He has been so critical and just the amount of detail and organization that goes into each and every game. You're seeing the outcome of that, we were looking more organized, we're more prepared. We literally know our role to the last detail. We know the role of the person next to us. So yeah, again, just excited and happy with the position that we're in now.”
Dash midfielder Sophie Schmidt
(on today's game) “Very proud of our team performance, we started the game a little bit slow, they got the upper hand. We dug deep and stuck to our game plan. We got the goals back and it was just a great performance from us. We need to be more clinical in front of goal and I think we made a few errors, and they capitalized on it. All-in-all solid performance, we walk away with three points on the road and can't be happier.”
(on the team finishing the weekend in third place) “Amazing. It's great. I don't know if we've been in this position before. We've given ourselves an awesome chance moving forward. If we keep getting clean sheets, we're going to give ourselves the best chance to make the playoffs.”
(on being able to earn points away from home) “It's huge. Being on the road is usually the difficult part of the season – to get points while you're away, traveling. The U.S. is a big country and there are far distances to go. As long as we can keep scraping points while we're on the road, it's going to pay dividends moving forward for that last little push.”
(on her goal) “The play and the setup was beautiful on the left side of the field. Marissa (Viggiano) had the ball and she was getting closed down. All I remember was just screaming that I wanted the ball so bad. She played the perfectly weighted pass to me and I was like, oh shoot, this is on my left foot. I was like, I have to do this one time. And I was just so careful not to hit it too hard. And yeah, I don't think I could have hit that any better. It was a dream goal.”
(on the return of the international players) “It's been phenomenal. The team and Juan (Carlos Amoros) coming in has made the transition for the international players super easy, seamless. The team has put in so much work while we were gone. It's just a testament to our culture. Just how seamless it's been to have people come in and out of the environment. So, kudos to the players that filled the gaps while we were away. Making our job easy when we came back to give us the best position moving forward.”
