Swope Park Rangers head coach Marc Dos Santos
On his team’s perseverance:
“I don’t remember a game like this. You have to have a spirit out of this world and energy out of this world and a commitment out of this world. I told the guys before overtime that anything is possible. Nothing in this world is impossible. Everything’s possible if you believe and if you give everything you have. We felt that we could’ve won with two lines of four defending, but we felt Kelly had something. That’s why we have two forwards like Mark and Dane. It shows again, nobody is bigger than the team. One day Mark is going to be the difference, the other day Kelly, the other day someone else. The commitment was out of this world.”
On going down to nine men:
“It’s tough. In this level of soccer, it’s very difficult. You have the sending off of Meyer, then you have to play 40 minutes of 11v9 and it’s very very difficult to do at any level. We were incredible, especially the spirit we showed defending. The guys had a big belief. They knew that it wasn’t impossible. We said we needed to play one ball, just one ball to Dane or Nansel, and Dane got it.”
On the resilience of his players:
“To get a win like that, to qualify for the final when you have nine players on the field, I don’t know how to describe it. We said we wanted to have a day here, that once Alvarado and Meyer got sent off, it would be a day that everyone in the stadium would remember. I don’t think many people that were here today are going to forget the spirit of these guys.”
On the performance of Oumar Ballo:
“(He was) huge. Ballo was a giant. He was strong. Same thing with (Amer) Didic. The collective spirit of everybody, including the guys coming off the bench, was out of this world. And it’s incredible, again, to win a game like that.”
Swope Park Rangers defender Oumar Ballo
On the defensive effort:
“We were a little busy. It was a lot of fun. We went down to nine men and we had to put the work in to finish it out. Credit to everyone who defended and for our team sticking together and believing in each other.”
On the emotions in the game:
“This is our field. This is our home turf. No matter how many people we go down, we are going to try our hardest. As you saw, everyone worked as hard as they could. We left everything on the field and the victory was well deserved.”
On the sustained pressure:
“I try to lead by example. For us to play as hard as we could and not concede, we all have to do our part. The goal was not to let it go into the net. I felt the first one was a little bit my fault but after that, in my head I said no more goals. Clear it out. Get a touch on it. Keep the opposition from scoring.”
Swope Park Rangers forward Dane Kelly
On advancing to the Conference Final:
“We’ve been through so much this season and we’ve still stuck together as a team. That is got us into the finals. One thing about this team is we definitely have confidence in each other. We believe in each other. There was a lot of emotion.”
