{"id":32717,"date":"2015-03-22T15:17:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T19:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=32717"},"modified":"2015-03-22T15:19:09","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T19:19:09","slug":"impact-shackle-nguyen-to-get-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=32717","title":{"rendered":"Impact Shackle Nguyen to Get Result"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 If the Impact were going to get a result from Saturday\u2019s match against the Revolution, they knew they\u2019d have to focus on shutting down a specific part of the field.<\/p>\n

Last year, Lee Nguyen scored two goals in his last two games against the Impact, and with that memory fresh in Frank Klopas\u2019 mind, he wasn\u2019t about to let the same happen again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we played, we knew that Lee Nguyen was going to be an important part in the middle,\u201d Klopas said. \u201cThe way they played the 4-3-2-1, and Nguyen finding those pockets in the middle, so we played 4-3-3 and we had (Callum) Mallace in the pocket to make sure we did a good job with (Nguyen).\u201d<\/p>\n

To prevent Nguyen from striking, the Impact flooded the box with a pack of defenders. And it worked about as well as Klopas could\u2019ve hoped for. <\/p>\n

With the central channel congested, Nguyen was limited to 48 touches, and his passing accuracy was an unimpressive 67.6 percent. If the creative midfielder was going to beat the Impact, he\u2019d have to do it from distance.<\/p>\n

The only prime opportunity Nguyen managed to find was an uncharacteristic one. In the 71st minute, Chris Tierney whipped a cross to Nguyen, who used his head rather than his right foot, to try and steer it on target, but sent it over the bar.<\/p>\n

But the tactic wasn\u2019t just about frustrating Nguyen and, to a different degree, central forward Juan Agudelo. By no means.<\/p>\n

Montreal\u2019s M.O. is to sit back and play for the counter, which is precisely what it tried to do by using those numbers in the central channel in the hopes of pulling the Revolution apart. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew down the middle was going to be really congested,\u201d Klopas said. \u201cSo our ability to move the ball quick, and try to attack more the wide areas – when we did that, we had success. The Revs do a good job in the middle when they want to force balls to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Hassoun Camara\u2019s 61st minute ejection left the Impact shorthanded, they went into a defensive shell for good. While the Revolution was able to uncover a handful of chances during the final half hour, they were unable to find the back of the net.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just went straight defense, and it was kind of hard to get in the box,\u201d Revolution midfielder Diego Fagundez said. \u201cWe were playing around the box and trying to get chances in, but we just couldn\u2019t get one in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering the losses of Cameron Porter and Dominic Oduro, who both came out due to injuries, and the ejection of Camara, Klopas had nothing but praise for his squad\u2019s performance. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into the game with a good plan,\u201d Klopas said. \u201cI think the guys stuck to that and under the circumstances, it was a great effort by the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Impact boss Frank Klopas preached the importance of limiting Lee Nguyen’s chances. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32718,"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":[891,562,119,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Klopas-1.png?fit=600%2C419","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32717"}],"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=32717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32720,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32717\/revisions\/32720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}