After stopping and starting play more than traffic on I-95 past New York City (not really, but you get the point), this latest group of games has been the longest stretch of continuous play for most teams. The Revolution have at least met the benchmark of not being terrible, but they still haven’t convincingly proven that they can play a game resembling soccer on any given night.
Wednesday, September 2 vs. NYCFC – 0-2 L – Still at home at Gillette, the Revolution suffered their first loss in eight games (which isn’t as great as it sounds – the seven prior games included five ties). They were outpossessed, couldn’t hold on to the ball in the middle of the field, kind of shot (hey, at least they registered shots on goal), and generally looked . . . not good. Michael Mancienne, replacing Andrew Farrell at center back, scored, for the wrong team, not for the first time. Look, everyone makes mistakes, but one of your big concerns for your center back should not be if his header/slide tackle/attempted clearance is going to end up in his own goalkeeper’s net whenever he touches the ball in the penalty area.
Sunday, September 6 at Chicago Fire – 2-1 W – Back on the road, Chicago and the Revolution began the game by trading goals off of defensive mistakes. New England scored early after Gustavo Bou won a ball in the midfield and centered it for Adam Buksa, who dropped a header behind his defender for Tommy McNamara to run on to. McNamara passed the ball across the face of goal where Teal Bunbury was waiting to knock it in. On the other side of the field, the Revolution were not dealing well with corner kicks, and conceded after the initial corner was cleared, but Brandon Bye kept a Fire player onside when the ball was played back into the box by Chicago. Nevertheless, the Revolution were rescued by none other than Teal Bunbury, who in his Bunbury-est goal of 2020, scored when his attempted cross to find Bou or Buksa curled beautifully into the top corner of the goal. To make things even better/worse, former Revolution player Bobby Shuttleworth was in net for Chicago. After that goal, New England decided not to test their luck any further and dropped back a lot and played defensively for the rest of the game.
Midweek – In the latest installment of “Bruce brings back Friedel’s fired footballers,” Lee Nguyen was reacquired by the team from Miami, joining Kelyn Rowe (and Seth Sinovic, but he left much earlier, when Steve Nicol was coach) in coming back to the Revolution after Brad Friedel chased them off. I still don’t agree completely with Nguyen’s behavior in bargaining for a higher salary in 2018 (he had recently signed a new contract), but Friedel was definitely a large part of the problem. A team doesn’t go from losing two games in five days with a combined score of 11-1 to grinding out ties and wins with the exact same players after the coach is fired, unless there was a problem with the coach. Nguyen’s older now, and hasn’t been playing the same kinds of minutes as he was with the Revolution, but at this point in this season, why not give him a try? The Revolution didn’t play with the same kind of fluidity after he left until Carles Gil arrived, and they haven’t looked like that since Gil’s been injured. He knows the league, the team, the players, the location, the stadium and field. [But the training facility is new. No more riding golf carts to the practice fields. Which seriously was how they used to get to their grass fields from the locker room.] So why not? Let’s give it a shot.
Saturday, September 12 at Philadelphia Union – 1-2 L – On the Revolution bingo card: lose a game they might have tied on a last-minute-of-second-half-stoppage-time-corner-kick goal – check. For the third time in eight weeks, the Revolution had a game against the Union, this time heading down to Pennsylvania for the away game. Gustavo Bou, having played the majority of the five previous games in seventeen days and seeming visibly tired in the Chicago game, started on the bench. Joining him was Lee Nguyen, who shortened his quarantine by driving (not flying) directly from Florida to Massachusetts, the same evening he was traded, in a Tesla. Because of course. Anyway, the players on the field had an uneventful first half, managing to keep Philadelphia off the scoreboard while not creating many chances for themselves.
Shortly into the second half, Matt Polster picked up a second yellow card for pulling a Union player back, which is rightfully a foul, but I would argue the play also included the Union player flinging himself to the ground like he’d just been karate kicked in the back of the head. The Revolution then park basically all of their players in their half of the field, which goes decently until Philadelphia scores on a typical defensive circus of errors. However, after already subbing in Scott Caldwell to cover for Polster, Diego Fagundez, and Tajon Buchanan, Bruce Arena uses his final two substitutions to bring on Bou and Nguyen for the last fifteen minutes of the game. Almost immediately, New England’s presence in the middle of the field improves. Whether it’s because Bou has gotten some rest or because the Revolution really have been missing someone who can keep and pass the ball in the middle of the field, I don’t know, but in the moments leading to their tying goal, there were glimpses of the 2014 MLS cup team there. The goal came off a give and go with Bou and was Buchanan’s first ever MLS goal, so congratulations to him. In typical Revolution fashion, they then hang in there until the very last corner kick of the game, when Fagundez’s clearance travels about five feet out of the box to an unmarked Union player directly in front of the goal1 who takes his time and space to score a(n admittedly nice) goal. No points for you, New England.
1Defending 101, taught to literal children: clear the ball to the sidelines, not the middle of the field, especially if you’re only going to kick it about three feet and literally almost any other action (kicking the ball way, way down the field; out to the side for a throw in; or into empty space in the midfield), would probably slow down the game enough to make it to the final whistle.
Takeaways: Not much Matt Turner could have done. Andrew Farrell and Henry Kessler continue to look like the team’s best center back pairing. Alexander Buttner, at left back, had a couple decent crosses and one very good one. Polster, minus red card, has been a good fit at defensive midfield, but Caldwell had the most solid game I’ve seen from him since Montreal at the Returnament, especially once Lee Nguyen came on. Based on his limited minutes, Nguyen still looks like he could play very well with this team. And even without the goal, Buchanan has looked better in his recent appearances – less likely to dribble directly into opposing defenders and take absurd shots. So it’s on to the next set of three games. Montreal has been freed from Canada, so get ready for #MapleSyrupDerby time again.
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