{"id":39197,"date":"2015-10-30T08:32:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T12:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=39197"},"modified":"2015-10-30T08:32:52","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T12:32:52","slug":"heaps-tips-cap-to-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=39197","title":{"rendered":"Heaps Tips Cap to DC"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s often said that in life, timing everything. The same logic could also apply to soccer, especially when the stakes are as high as they are in postseason play.<\/p>\n

Despite falling into an early deficit during their knockout round match against the Revolution, DC United not only responded, but they did so at critical moments to stage a 2-1 comeback win.<\/p>\n

“Timely goals are what D.C. is all about, and I give them credit,” Heaps told the media after the match. “I give (DC coach) Ben Olsen a lot of credit, and I tip my hat because it wasn\u2019t a game where we gave in or anything like that. Those guys went out there, in terms of D.C. United, and they fought hard. They had a game on Sunday and they bounced back well.”<\/p>\n

The first DC goal came minutes before the end of the first half. With the Revolution clinging to their one-goal lead, which they hoped would survive at halftime, DC struck a cruel blow to when Chris Pontius converted a Fabian Espindola free kick into paydirt to erase that narrow advantage.<\/p>\n

“It was huge,” United forward Chris Rolfe told the media after the match. “I think we\u2019ve had a couple of games where we get late goals right before the half that kind of bring us back in it, whether we\u2019re down 2-0 or down 1-0. That\u2019s a game-changer. I think we would\u2019ve been confident coming into the locker room at the half without scoring, but with that goal, obviously, we said \u2018it\u2019s for the taking.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

DC certainly played like the match was theirs for the taking in the second half. They not only won the possession battle, but helped themselves to a number of attacking chances thanks to a disheveled Revolution defense.<\/p>\n

In the 75th minute, the pressure exerted by the hosts seemed to reach a boiling point when they were awarded a penalty after Scott Caldwell was charged with a handball inside the box. Role stepped up to do the honors, but his shot smacked off the post to leave the match level.<\/p>\n

Said Rolfe: “There was a split second there, maybe a minute or two, after the PK where it was running through my head and I was saying \u2018Wow, it\u2019s just one of those days, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen, I haven\u2019t played 90 minutes in a long time and I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to take me out.\u2019 I just cleared my head, tried to stay optimistic and kept making runs.”<\/p>\n

The miscue was all but forgotten minutes later, when Rolfe weaseled his way into the final third, received a pass from Espindola, and scored virtually unimpeded in the 83rd minute. And just like that, the Revolution were suddenly down a goal on the road with little time to file a reply.<\/p>\n

Although the locals made a shout for the equalizer in stoppage time when Jermaine Jones forced a strong save from Bill Hamid, Heaps couldn’t help but applaud the way DC – and Rolfe, especially – capitalized at the most critical of moments.<\/p>\n

“I credit Chris Rolfe\u2019s response; he misses a penalty kick and then scores a goal,” Heaps said. “That\u2019s pretty good from the kid.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Heaps credited DC’s ability to strike at critical moments during Wednesday’s knockout match. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[611,891,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Heaps-11.png?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39197"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39211,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions\/39211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}