Sporting KC Manager Peter Vermes
On where game ranks on his all-time list…
“It probably has its own special place because of Neal [Patterson]’s passing on Sunday. We talked about it a great deal as a group. We talked about how, you know, if it wasn’t for him and the rest of the owners, and obviously him being a huge part of keeping this team here, for a lot of us, who knows if we have jobs. But his commitment to everything about the club was tremendous. What’s interesting, and I told the guys this, Neal really thought a lot about this tournament. He thought the U.S. Open Cup was a great tournament. You can equate it to Major League Baseball -- you have Major League, Triple-A, Double-A and Single-A. And a Single-A team could play against the Royals. He got it. And he thought it was a great tournament. So we talked about that if you can reach down deep, and hopefully that’s something that you can reach down for, is that we find a way to win for him. And two things happened in tonight's game. One thing is that his big quality is that he was an incredibly hard worker. Well, the guys had to work very hard tonight for however many minutes being a man down. And they gave nothing away. They found a way to just block everything. It was unreal. And then the other thing is that he really loved goals. He would always talk to me and say ‘ah, we really need to score goals here.’ All the time. So the fact that we stick in three tonight being a man down, I don’t know of a different way we could’ve paid tribute to him. I’ve got to say a lot to the crowd, too. The crowd was fantastic, helping us along throughout the course of the game. Especially being a man down. But I honestly will tell you this: when Seth [Sinovic] got thrown out, for some reason I believed that we were going to win the game. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it was Neal, I don’t know. I just felt it tonight, I really did.”
On status of Ike Opara…
“I just heard that he’s doing well, he’s at the hospital, but he’s doing well, he’s alert. So that’s good. I’m sure we’ll find some more out later.”
On strategy after losing Seth Sinovic…
“Well our guys believed they’re a good team, and they are. Even though we’re down a man, we can still find ways to hurt somebody. I thought that if a couple times we had a little more patience, we could have actually scored one earlier in the game. But I’ll tell you that there was a tactical decision in keeping Benny out of the game tonight and putting him in late. He was instrumental at the end there to make the push that we did. He created basically all of the goals. He was big time. His impact on the game was tremendous from an attacking perspective.”
On personal relationship with Neal Patterson…
“I actually wound up having a pretty special relationship with him. I learned so much just being in meetings with him. He was a brilliant guy, he really was. It’s obvious how successful he’s been, but he was really a brilliant guy. What I appreciated was that he always told it how it was. He didn’t mix his words, he didn’t mix things up, he told you like it was. And I like being around people like that. Because if I’m doing something you don’t like, I want you to tell me so I have a chance to fix it. At the same time, he could leave that off to the side. And later on, he could hang out with you and not have to talk about those things that he talked about earlier. So he was a fantastic guy. He loved this team. The championships that we won while he was here, he was very proud of those. Because it was totally different than the world that he’s in with his corporate world, and so winning those cups were very important to him. He was extremely proud of those things. And he enjoyed them, which I’m glad he got the chance to do.”
On play of Erik Palmer-Brown…
“EPB was fantastic. His reading of where to be in the box when a lot of crosses were coming in on the ground, as well as in the air, was impeccable. He was good on the ball, he was strong when he needed to be. He won a lot of aerial duels in the box. He was a monster. I was very, very proud of him. And the progression that he has made as a player is tremendous. He’s playing very well.”
On play of Latif Blessing…
“He was big the whole game, I thought his work ethic was tremendous. But when we stuck him up front -- we were planning on trying to do that. We were trying to stretch it as long as we could because the guys were doing a good job of defending well. And at the same time, we were thinking about getting Benny [Feilhaber] in later in the 80th minute and on. But we were still playing pretty well, we knew as soon as we were going to bring Benny in, we would stick Latif up top. We were hoping that he was going to cause them some problems being in the middle of the park. So he was a handful. He was very difficult for them. Shoot, a couple chances and he probably could’ve scored four goals if he wanted to.”
Sporting KC midfielder Benny Feilhaber
Thoughts on the match…
“First, I would like to say I think we won that game in the 90 minutes that we worked our tails off with 10 against 11 for 75 minutes plus extra time. Those guys kept our chances of the game alive. That was the hardest part of the game and that is where we won the game. That gave me the opportunity to come in and make 1-2 plays and try to help our team. That was my job this game and I did what I could. Obviously, Latif [Blessing] did a fantastic job to finish the first goal and then from there we just worked together to get the second and third. It just can’t go understated how much hard work it took in the first 90 minutes of the game to get us into that position. I think that is where the game was won.”
On the emotions of the match tonight…
“I think there are a lot of emotions in that game. Obviously with Neal [Patterson] passing, he was in the game for us today. We were 11 on 11 when we lost [Seth] because Neal was in everybody and he helped us today and when Ike went down, that was really scary as well. For a guy that’s been our best player - potentially - this year, to go down like that, you see him on the ground like that and you get scared. There are just a lot of emotions and you want to finish the game out for more than one person at that point. You want to finish it out for the city, for the fans and for the team. This organization got together in that moment and that’s where the added energy came from. I know there are a lot of games where you say that was a team performance, but this was more than that. This was the organization, it was the city, the fans, literally everybody pulled their weight today and made a big difference.
Sporting KC defender Erik Palmer-Brown
On his performance tonight…
“I’m confident in my play. I’ve said this before, Ike and Bes and Kevin, we have great center backs on our team. It’s a privilege to be on this team. It’s really hard to play on this team, but when you get your opportunity you have to take advantage of it. So when you go out there, it’s just another game. We have to go have fun and do the best you can and just take advantage of the moment.”
On being able to hold Dallas at bay with 10 men…
“Our defense and our players, we are fit. We wanted to win this game for the Pattersons and for us, that was our motivation and we couldn’t take a loss here.”
On how this win pushes the team going forward…
“It’s our goal to win this tournament. We are not going to stop there. We want to win MLS Cup. We want to win Supporters’ Shield. We want to win it all the year. For us to get this win, being a man down for most of this game it just shows the fight and resilience that we have as team.”
On the team coming together after Ike’s injury…
“It’s tough. We are praying for Ike [Opara]. It wasn’t intentional, but it’s tough to see one of your teammates, a leader on your team, the rock on the defense, a guy that has dragged me along kind of like my older brother. It’s tough to see him go down. But for us, we saw how hard the was playing and all the effort the has given us this year. We were doing it not only for the Pattersons after that, we had extra motivation for Ike.
Sporting KC striker Latif Blessing
Thoughts on the goals…
“I’m very happy. I thank Benny [Feilhaber], he just gave me the passes to score so I give the credit to Benny. We just worked hard for the team to move forward. We are here for the cup. I’m here for the cup. I just came from Ghana to win cups for Kansas City. I’m so happy to win today.”
FC Dallas Head Coach Oscar Pareja
On the result…
“Obviously disappointed with the result. A game that we could get a result in the regular time since we were one man up and we couldn’t find the net. We knew that Kansas City was going to sit back and wait and for some errors in the back. But we couldn’t find the net and that’s the final story. In the last 30 minutes, we were equal because the red card for Maxi [Urruti] and after that for [Javier] Morales and that just changed the whole thing and they were more accurate and precise in their finishing.”
On what went wrong in overtime…
“I thought in the last 30 minutes there was a lot of open space. Believe it or not, I thought in the 90 minutes, we did a lot to try to break the lines that Kansas City had and that cost us. As I said, there were spaces in the last 30 minutes and they took advantage of that. We couldn’t find the net and to win games you have to score goals.”
On the priority put on Open Cup heading into this tournament…
It has been very good for the club to fight for Open Cup always. It is an important tournament. We won it last year and we know what it takes to achieve those trophies. We put all the energy today just to advance. I think we didn’t leave anything behind and everything was given by the players. It was a game that just turned very awkward in the way it went.
Referee Younes Marrakchi
Why was the red card shown to Seth Sinovic in the 15th minute?
“Denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity by foul.”
It appeared that you initially reached for your front pocket to issue a yellow card; what prompted the more severe punishment?
“It was a denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity by foul offense. I was reaching for my red card.”
What assistance did you get from your assistant referee?
“The assistant referee concurred with the decision.”
On the second yellow shown to Maxi Urruti, what made the play card-worthy rather than a collision between players going for the ball?
“The foul was reckless.”
