Whew...que partidazo.... (What a game!)

Two hours, 26 minutes. Overtime. Deadlines to meet. Blog thread to update. Stories to write. But like you who sweated this thing out, I got through it, too.

For those of you that weren't here at Starfire (I still am), this place was a nut house. Especially after the goals. Tomorrow I will post some video of the moments right after the game ended. Got to get back to Seattle tonight...sorry.

Houston coach Dominic Kinnear said Brian Mullan suffered a possible broken ankle and he was NOT happy about the turf at Starfire. Join the club, DK. No one likes it, especially visiting coaches.

I leave you for today with the quotes of the night.

Sigi Schmid:]

"What it told our guys is that there are rivalries based off proximity like us and Portland, but I think what you're going to see is there's going to be some pretty intense battles when Seattle plays Houston. You're going to see that from here on out. It's good for both their franchise and our franchise because when you have a quality opponent that you have a rivalry with it pushes you both to a higher level."

On early injuries: "Early in the game we had two guys get cuts. I don't know what happened, but I made sure the doctor was in there at half to get them fixed up right away. They didn't bleed in the second half, so I don't know if they used staples or sterstrips or what, but they were bleeding pretty good in the first half."

On Open Cup final: "Right now we're worried about Saturday. I can't look forward to September 1st. I was looking forward to getting a week off then, but now we know we won't get that. What happens between now and September 1 as far as the Open Cup, we'll start worrying about the Open Cup final when we get to like August 28 or 29. We won't worry about it before. We're limited about the number of foreign players we can use, but that decision has been made for us with Jhon Kennedy (Hurtado) getting the red card. I told the team that if you're going to get to a final, you're not going to hand the trophy to the other team."

Stephen King

On goal: "Steve Zakuani had the ball out wide and took the guy one-on-one and got a good cross in. I think Sebastien (Le Toux) might have got a touch to it and it ricocheted off a defender. It was kind of a loose ball and I shot it in."

On fans: "It's incredible. These fans are the best in the league. No doubt about that. They were 4,000 strong before we even got out here for warm-ups. It's really amazing and it makes a big difference for us as players to have fans like that pulling for us."

Steve Zakuani

On frustration with not converting opportunities: "It was frustrating. I think I could have had a hat trick, but at the end of the day, the team kept fighting and it doesn't matter if I scored because we won the game."

Nate Jaqua

On advancing to the final) "It's great, but we still have business to do. We want to win this thing so I guess we're going to D.C. now. We'll go to D.C. and win this thing. I think it'll be special for this club, in their first year, to win the Open Cup."

Houston coach Kinnear

"I'd like a good playing surface, and I understand there's a process involved to host these games. We have a perfectly good grass field down in Houston. It could be a good place to play this...I think it's unfair to ask these players to do that and then this prestigious tournament gets kind of tainted that way. So we got a couple of guys injured because of the turf, one possibly long term."

"When you play on this it creates more physical challenges. In my opinion the guy who scored the equalizer was guilty of a few rash...flying arms, and he was lucky to stay on the field. But that's the way they called the game."