{"id":21602,"date":"2013-09-02T11:06:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T15:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=21602"},"modified":"2013-09-02T11:23:31","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T15:23:31","slug":"five-things-we-learned-revolution-at-toronto-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=21602","title":{"rendered":"Five Things We Learned: Revolution at Toronto FC"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"It<\/a>

(Photo: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz)<\/p><\/div>\n

If you were looking for fluid, attacking football on Friday night, there was plenty of it. At Rio Tinto Stadium, of course.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the entertainment value of the Revolution-Toronto FC undercard didn’t quite measure up to the nationally-televised Salt Lake-Portland clash, which was good for NBC Sports, but\u00a0bad Revolution supporters.<\/p>\n

To be fair, the Revolution certainly started off on the right foot. Literally. When\u00a0Diego Fagundez used his right\u00a0orange boot\u00a0to tap through Kelyn Rowe’s pass, he\u00a0didn’t just put the guests\u00a0on the board\u00a0early. He\u00a0offered hope to those who firmly believed that there’s no such thing as a pretty game when Toronto FC is on the field.<\/p>\n

But that hope was fleeting. And, in a shocking development, it was the Revolution who’d successfully turn a promising game into an unwatchable match.<\/p>\n

Instead of doing basic things like connecting passes, clearing the ball out, or marking the guy with the ball inside the 18, the Revolution seemed hellbent on making it tough on themselves. And while all\u00a0that was taking place, Toronto actually played semi-decent soccer, which opened the door for Andrew Wiedeman to pick out a bouncing ball inside the Revolution box and deposit it right before halftime.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was\u00a0naivete.\u00a0Or the rain. Or the fact that Toronto benefited from sound performances from Doneil Henry, Jonathan Osorio and Ashtone Morgan all in the same game. Maybe it was a combination of all three. Who knows? But whatever the reasons were, the Revolution did themselves no favors on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Sure, a road point is a road point, and they’ll take it. After all, every point matters in the wide-open Eastern Conference. But this was an ugly\u00a0game they should’ve somehow found a way\u00a0to get maximum points from,\u00a0regardless of their past failures at BMO Field.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, for\u00a0Revolution supporters and\u00a0random viewers\u00a0alike,\u00a0the 1-1 draw\u00a0had to feel like 90 minutes of their life they’ll never get back.<\/p>\n

So what did we learn from a game that only a Eurosnob could love?<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Doneil Henry may not be one\u00a0of the best center backs in MLS, but he\u00a0may have\u00a0written the blueprint on\u00a0shutting down\u00a0Juan Agudelo.<\/strong> It looked like it was going to be a very\u00a0long night for Henry only two minutes into the match. After ushering Kelyn Rowe into the 18 to help set up Diego Fagundez’s ninth goal of the season, Henry\u00a0dug in deep and\u00a0kept Agudelo\u00a0in check all night. True, he may have been helped by the fact that Agudelo wasn’t getting decent service.\u00a0But\u00a0on the occasions in which Agudelo was getting the ball, Henry\u00a0used brute force and sound positioning to force\u00a0him into some heavy touches. Whereas Amobi Okugu may have respected\u00a0the\u00a0talented 20-year-old\u00a0too much last week, Henry wasn’t concerned about containing the 20-year-old. Instead, he went bold and actively shut down the Revolution game-changer until\u00a0said game-changer\u00a0had to come off early in the 78th minute due to an apparent injury. Henry wasn’t perfect, but he kept the Twitterverse free of the #swagudelo hashtag, and that in itself, is nothing short of a victory for any MLS center back.<\/p>\n

2. The early goal\u00a0seemed to give\u00a0the Revolution a false sense of security.\u00a0<\/strong>When Fagundez struck inside\u00a0of two minutes, the Revolution had to like their chances. And when the 18-year-old nearly netted another before Joe Bendik denied him on a\u00a0diving save minutes later,\u00a0it looked\u00a0like the Revolution were keen to rip\u00a0off a third straight win.\u00a0But with\u00a0plenty of time for Toronto to get back into it, the Revolution uncharacteristically started to lay off the accelerator. Instead of asserting themselves and\u00a0playing their game, they panicked, and played a number of wayward balls\u00a0right back to Toronto.\u00a0They conceded acres of space in the middle of the park and struggled to keep\u00a0up with the likes of Robert Earnshaw,\u00a0Jonathan Osorio\u00a0and Ashtone Morgan, so much so that Lee Nguyen and Diego Fagundez were both\u00a0booked before the hour mark.\u00a0Although no one will complain about a 2nd minute goal, it clearly changed the dynamic of the game. Instead of pressing the issue, the Revolution were the ones getting pressed, and Toronto, to their credit, pressed hard enough to get an equalizer before the interval.<\/p>\n

3. The Revolution were\u00a0uncharacteristically sloppy inside their own 18.<\/strong> Another byproduct of the Revolution’s casual approach in the midfield was the number of shaky\u00a0defensive sequences in front of\u00a0goal.\u00a0In the 27th minute, the normally-stout Jose Goncalves whiffed badly on a Morgan cross before it was quickly\u00a0cleared away. In the 29th minute, Goncalves watched a Bobby Convey corner sail over his head.\u00a0Another Morgan cross found Earnshaw, who was virtually ignored by A.J. Soares in 33rd minute.\u00a0Granted,\u00a0the likes of Nguyen, Rowe and\u00a0Chad Barrett all could’ve done better to prevent so many balls from falling into the box. But\u00a0by the time Richard\u00a0Eckersley was\u00a0readying himself to deliver a\u00a045+2 minute free kick, the Revolution were sitting ducks in the pouring rain.\u00a0They had no fewer than three different chances to clear Eckersley’s long free kick, but inexplicably\u00a0failed to send it away. Instead of\u00a0closing in on Wiedeman,\u00a0a number of Revolution players\u00a0were compelled\u00a0to\u00a0protest an apparent\u00a0Toronto handball before the ball fell into the back of the net. Whether it was the right call or not, no\u00a0team can expect to escape unscathed with the kind of undisciplined\u00a0defending the Revolution exhibited in the shadow of their own goal on Friday.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The fact that\u00a0Lee Nguyen went the full 90, despite an early booking and a number of ill-advised fouls thereafter, speaks volumes about Andy Dorman’s role on this team.<\/strong> If there was any player who was practically begging to come off, it had to be the foul-happy Nguyen. After he was cautioned at the half hour mark, the central midfielder continued to hack away at Toronto’s midfielders. Yet, even though it became readily apparent that Nguyen was a red card waiting to happen, Dorman remained on the bench, while the likes of Dimitry Imbongo (another caution-prone player), Saer Sene and Charlie Davies came on. To the untrained eye, all of those subs make sense. Three points was the objective, and all of those\u00a0changes supported that goal. But with Nguyen doing little but becoming a potential liability, Jay Heaps\u00a0decided to keep\u00a0him on pitch, rather than taking him off for Dorman. Of course,\u00a0Nguyen\u00a0managed to avoid\u00a0a second yellow, despite collecting a team-high five fouls. Yet,\u00a0 had referee Fotis Bazakos been a less patient man, Heaps would’ve faced serious questions about leaving Nguyen on the field. And some of those questions would’ve been about\u00a0the coach’s\u00a0confidence in\u00a0Dorman.<\/p>\n

5. The lack of a true midfield presence isn’t going to make the Revolution’s playoff push any easier.<\/strong> Not to harp too much on the midfielders’ performance, but if the Revolution believe that the final eight games aren’t going to be like Friday night’s affair, they’re in for a rude awakening. As Chad Barrett warned prior to last week’s Union contest, MLS teams don’t often play pretty down the stretch. Rather, they play results-first football, and the only style that matters is the kind that manufactures points. In other words, expect a lot more games to resemble the one we saw on Friday, which doesn’t bode well for the Revolution at the moment. Although Scott Caldwell is an emerging talent, he’s still a 22-year-old rookie. And he certainly looked like one against an inferior Toronto side. The fact is, when the going gets tough, the Revolution don’t get going. They struggle when games get reduced to glorified amateur clashes, as evidenced by draws to D.C., Chivas USA and now Toronto. Despite that, the Revolution may just find a way to get to the postseason. They just might. But don’t expect it to be smooth sailing from here, especially\u00a0with\u00a0teams like Montreal, Chicago, D.C., and Houston all on\u00a0the docket for\u00a0September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One point from an ugly game left the Revolution wanting for more in Friday’s 1-1 draw to Toronto FC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21603,"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":[186,142,594,1304,107,49,1274,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/BarrettRowe1.png?fit=495%2C258","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602"}],"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=21602"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21621,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602\/revisions\/21621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}