{"id":24953,"date":"2014-04-12T20:25:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T00:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24953"},"modified":"2014-04-13T00:54:45","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T04:54:45","slug":"unlikely-scorers-propel-revs-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24953","title":{"rendered":"Unlikely Scorers Propel Revs to Win"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kevin

Kevin Alston scored his first career MLS goal on Saturday night. (Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 Kevin Alston gave the New England Revolution a 68<\/span>th<\/sup> minute lead with his first career MLS goal and Jerry Bengtson sealed the win with his first goal in over a year in stoppage time to give the home side a 2-0 victory over the Houston Dynamo in front of 14,259 at Gillette Stadium on Saturday night.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alston\u2019s goal sparked to life what had been a match largely devoid of quality chances till that point. The Revolution left back got the ball in the box off nice combination play for Daigo Kobayashi and Teal Bunbury and perfectly placed a shot past Tally Hall for his first career goal in the 68th<\/sup> minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to just finally break the seal,\u201d said Alston. \u201cIt\u2019s six years later [since I started my MLS career] and I\u2019m just glad it\u2019s finally here. I can say I scored at least one in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bengtson then caught Houston\u2019s backline pressing forward for a late equalizer and beat Hall to the ball in stoppage time before calmly finishing to clinch the win for New England.<\/p>\n

The win temporarily pushes the Revolution (2-3-1, 7 points) into the fourth in the Eastern Conference, while Houston (2-3-0, 6 points) dropped to sixth place. New England also extended their home unbeaten streak to six games (including playoffs) and has yet to concede a goal at home through two games this season.<\/p>\n

The Revolution, with assistant coach Tom Soehn on the sidelines in place of suspended head coach Jay Heaps, made just one change from the team that lost 2-0 in D.C. last weekend and won 2-1 at San Jose the weekend before. Alston, the Revolution\u2019s eventual game-winning goal scorer came in for the injured Chris Tierney at left back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game didn\u2019t start out with a whole lot of pizazz,\u201d said Soehn. \u201cI felt like as the game built we started to feel it, started to create some opportunities, but we didn\u2019t finish on the opportunities. Part of the talk at halftime was we just need to have that killer instinct. This team continues to create opportunities and I think today helps get us over that hump to get those couple goals because we\u2019ve done a good job. We\u2019ve been organized, compact and some of the results haven\u2019t gone our way so it was refreshing to get the results today.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a dull opening 15 minutes, New England had the game\u2019s first shot when Andy Dorman sent in a cross from the right flank. Dorman\u2019s service found Saer Sene who, under pressure, weakly hit a header wide of the frame.<\/p>\n

New England finally tested Houston \u2018keeper Tally Hall in the 25th<\/sup> minute when Diego Fagundez got the ball on the left flank and cut inside at the top of the box. Fagundez hit a low shot to the near post, but Hall managed to push it wide with a diving save.<\/p>\n

New England then tested Hall twice in the 37th<\/sup> minute.\u00a0 First Sene was denied from long range and then Lee Nguyen saw a powerful shot from distance tipped over the bar by Hall.<\/p>\n

On the build-up to Nguyen\u2019s shot, the Revolution suffered a blow when Jose Goncalves picked up an injury on a rough late slid tackle from Ricardo Clark. Clark received a yellow card on the play and Darrius Barnes replaced Goncalves, who suffered a right quad injury, and moved to right back with Andrew Farrell sliding into center back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always difficult when you\u2019re coming in off the bench like that, especially unexpectedly,\u201d said Barnes. \u201cI mean anything can happen in a game, but you don\u2019t expect Jose to get injured like that, but that\u2019s what we\u2019re a team for \u2013 we\u2019re expected to go in when we\u2019re called upon. Jose went down and coach called my number to go in, so I just had to go in and do a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second half was much of the same as the first with minimal chances for both sides, but Alston put the Revolution on top in the 68th<\/sup> minute. Daigo Kobayashi got the ball just outside the box and attempted to find Teal Bunbury, but his pass was blocked. Kobayashi\u2019s second attempt found Bunbury, who quickly played in Alston and the Revolution defender made no mistake, blasting a shot past Hall into the upper corner for his first career goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked at halftime and they left a lot of space for Kevin to attack and I think Kevin just needs the confidence to really take those spaces,\u201d said Soehn. \u201cSo we talked about it and I was really happy for him that it came because he\u2019s got a lot of tools: he\u2019s fast, just the confidence to beat guys and him scoring is going to help that confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTommy [Soehn] was just pushing me all game \u2013 just telling me the space was there, just get in the attack get wide, and try to help out,\u201d said Alston. \u201cI think that pushing really helped me to just be in a good spot to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bunbury had a chance to add to New England\u2019s lead in the 90th<\/sup> minute after getting behind the defense on a lobbed through pass. Bunbury ran into the box, but managed to send his shot well wide of the target.<\/p>\n

A minute later substitute Jerry Bengtson would make no mistake when he beat Hall to a long ball from A.J. Soares and ran in on goal behind the keeper. Bengtson managed to place a shot around two defenders and into the net to give the Revolution the 2-0 win. The goal was the first for Bengtson, the Revolution\u2019s lone Designated Player, since March 9, 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that they were losing and they were pushing up the lines,\u201d said Bengtson through a translator. \u201cAt some point, I looked and knew that that was the opportunity. I looked over my shoulder and just took the space and scored.\u201d<\/p>\n

New England returns to action with a trip to face the Chicago Fire on Saturday, April 19, at 4 p.m. at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alston\u2019s first career goal, Bengtson\u2019s first goal in over a year gives Revolution 2-0 win over Houston Dynamo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24954,"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":[4,3],"tags":[46,121,109,49,1274],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/alstonfeature7.jpg?fit=490%2C240","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24955,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953\/revisions\/24955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}