From Starfire.

Osvaldo Alonso and Zach Scott practiced. Alonso will start either Wednesday or Saturday. Tyson Wahl is working as the No. 1 left back. Hurtado and Jaqua were back, too.

Quotes from Sigi Schmid:

On D.C. United) "Obviously D.C. has historically always been a very good franchise, very good team. Tommy Soehn does a good job coaching; someone I've known for a long time. Their teams always come to play. They're prepared well. They've got some good offensive weapons with guys like (Luciano) Emilio and (Santino) Quaranta is having a good season. You've got Fred, (Christian) Gomez. (Jaime) Moreno, we don't know if he's going to play or not because he came off injured last game. But there is a lot of good weapons. (Chris) Pontius has had a great rookie season for them. So it's a difficult opponent."

(On a short week to prepare) "It's a short week for both of us. But they're a team that plays a 3-5-2, so that's a little different formation than most of the teams play in the league. So we've got to be prepared for that. We know how to shift and slide out of what we do, and make them adjust to us a little bit also."

(On the team's health) "We're getting healthier. Obviously (Osvaldo) Alonso reappeared last Saturday, so that was good news for us as well. Zach Scott is training with us, but he's probably still not ready for this week because this is his first week of training. But we have more options. Nate (Jaqua) is back, and obviously (Jhon) Kennedy (Hurtado) is back as well. There's options that are there. We need some guys to play on Wednesday and we need some guys to play on Saturday."

(On Steve Zakuani's progress) "It's been good. I think he's getting fitter. We're getting more minutes out of him. He's certainly a dangerous player. He's a player that obviously the opponent worries about. When he gets the ball he has that ability to beat you. We need to get more results from him getting to the endline, although we were a bit unfortunate. The one ball he cut back to (Fredy) Montero hits (Joe) Cannon on the heel. He had another ball that he put across I think that Freddie Ljungberg almost got on the end of at the far post. And there was another one that Montero just missed sliding into it in the back post. I think that connection is getting closer, and it's going to be one game where he's going to walk away with two or three assists."

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