{"id":37797,"date":"2015-08-21T07:53:46","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T11:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=37797"},"modified":"2015-08-21T07:53:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T11:53:46","slug":"agudelo-finally-at-full-throttle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=37797","title":{"rendered":"Agudelo Finally at Full Throttle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

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

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 Something just wasn\u2019t right with Revolution midfielder\/forward Juan Agudelo over the last two months. But the reason why wasn\u2019t entirely clear until earlier this week.<\/p>\n

After starting each of the team’s first 14 games, Agudelo’s playing time took a noticeable dip as the summer rolled around. Some wondered whether the 22-year-old striker was struggling to adapt to his role as a wide midfielder. But it turns out the situation was a lot more complex than that.<\/p>\n

Although his name never appeared on the injury report, Agudelo told NESoccerToday.com<\/em> on Wednesday that he suffered a knock during his early-June U.S. Mean’s National Team call-up, and has been fighting to get back to\u00a0full fitness\u00a0ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a nagging knee injury,\u201d Agudelo said. \u201cIt was the internal part of my knee, it was just getting pretty sore after training and I was taking ibuprofen (for it).\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of the injury, Agudelo only made three starts, and was largely\u00a0unable to make the kind of impact seen earlier this season. Before long, a revitalized Diego Fagundez had taken over on the left side of the midfield, leaving some to wonder whether physical forward was truly cut out to be a winger.<\/p>\n

But Revolution coach Jay Heaps knew that it was just a matter of time before one of his top attacking threats would be back to full form.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuan\u2019s been really training extremely well over the last couple of weeks,\u201d Heaps said. \u201cI think he\u2019s fully fit from a little bit of a knock that he had back when he returned from the national team, so I credit Juan because I think he was fighting through, but he wasn\u2019t able to play at his top performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

One sign that the Agudelo of old\u00a0could\u00a0already be back\u00a0came in Saturday\u2019s 2-0 win over the Dynamo. Coming off the bench in the 59th minute, the midfielder\/forward helped secure the victory by scoring late after making a well-timed run into the area and pounding a Lee Nguyen pass out of the reach of\u00a0Houston goalkeeper Tyler Deric in the 88th minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what a forward\u2019s job is as a substitute,\u201d Agudelo said. \u201cIt\u2019s to come in, and do the best that he can to.\u00a0First of all, defend and help the team defensively because we were winning. In that case it would also help a lot if the forward scores, and luckily, I was able to provide that for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of the goal wasn\u2019t by accident, either. After he and his teammates were given the previous weekend off thanks to\u00a0a long-awaited bye week, Agudelo returned to training in the days leading up to the showdown against the Dynamo in top form.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t exaggerate how much it helped me just to take those three days off,\u201d Agudelo said. \u201cIt allowed my knee to recover, and it felt a lot better to where I\u2019m running a lot more now, and it feels great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revs midfielder\/forward Juan Agudelo spent much of the early part of the summer battling through a knee injury. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37799,"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":[891,46,1304,1274,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Agudelo-1.png?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797"}],"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=37797"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37804,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37797\/revisions\/37804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}