Two nice quotes from D.C. United’s Devon McTavish from his visit to the RFK media room today, and a leftover from Ben Olsen’s comments prior to Tuesday’s kickoff luncheon:
First, McTavish, who along with Greg Janicki didn’t do any running today, on concussions at D.C. United: “I don’t know what the deal is. I don’t know if we’re cursed here or something. Maybe if we get a new stadium it will help that situation.”
Hee hee.
He also gave some thoughts about Olsen’s return (my story will be in tomorrow’s print edition). I asked him about the balance between Olsen’s leadership and his high quality of play: “You always expect him to perform at his best. He has that quality when he’s on the field, he’s going to do well. There’s something about his leadership, his style of play, throwing his body in front of the ball and his passion that no one else really seems to. All the players around him can feed off that. I think that’s a big reason for our downfall last year was we never had that player.”
Olsen was asked on Tuesday about his role, and responded with this really interesting anecdote: “I remember when I was young. After every game, I’d be [cursing] Richie Williams left and right. ‘He won’t leave me alone out there.’ But the more I look back on my early days, he made me such a better player because he realized that I was a young player and that young players they tune out. It’s a tough deal to concentrate for 90 minutes when you’re young… He kept me on my toes, and I try to do that a little bit with guys. But it’s tough because I’m still mentally rusty and so I’m concentrating on myself out there. Juggling all that stuff, [Soehn’s] trust in me to do all that stuff is probably why I’m out there.”
