{"id":42825,"date":"2016-04-30T23:31:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T03:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=42825"},"modified":"2016-04-30T23:31:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T03:31:18","slug":"femi-gets-first-start-in-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=42825","title":{"rendered":"Femi Gets First Start in Draw"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

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

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 Not much is expected in terms of an immediate impact from third round SuperDraft picks, but New England Revolution rookie Femi Hollinger-Janzen is proving an exception with six appearances, including his first MLS start on Saturday, just 10 games into the young season.<\/p>\n

While New England\u2019s 10th<\/sup> overall pick Jordan McCrary and 30th<\/sup> overall pick Michael Gamble were much more heralded after the 2016 SuperDraft, neither has seen any game time, whereas Hollinger-Janzen, the 51st overall pick, has already become a regular contributor. After five strong showings off the bench, Hollinger-Janzen earned the start on Saturday at Gillette Stadium in a 2-2 draw with Orlando City SC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was that we were going to have Femi go out there and he\u2019s fresh and not coming back from any injury [like Juan Agudelo was],\u201d said Head Coach Jay Heaps. \u201cWe were excited to get him in the game. He brings a lot of energy and he certainly did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 69 minutes on the pitch Hollinger-Janzen attempted a shot, completed 8 of 11 passes (72.7%) and won two aerial duels.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty awesome to get my first start,\u201d said Hollinger-Janzen. \u201cA lot of nerves going through me, but I was happy out there, confident, and just played my game.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Charlie Davies out after suffering an injury in Wednesday\u2019s 1-1 draw with the Portland Timbers, Heaps needed to make a change up top. Agudelo, a U.S. National Team striker, was available, but with Femi\u2019s strong performances, the Revolution coach didn\u2019t have to risk putting in the more veteran striker who was coming off a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to coach, he was telling me how I\u2019ve just come back from a hamstring injury and Wednesday-Saturday is a quick turnaround and Femi\u2019s been doing great,\u201d said Agudelo. \u201cSo hat off to him, I thought he did well.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Agudelo wasn\u2019t the only teammate with praise for Hollinger-Janzen after his first start.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he was nervous, of course, first game,\u201d said midfielder Diego Fagundez, who opened the scoring in the seventh minute, of Hollinger-Janzen\u2019s first start. \u201cI remember my first game and it was one of those, but he came in, he did his job. He worked hard. There\u2019s nothing bad you can say about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the nerves, Hollinger-Janzen looked comfortable in 69 minutes up front as the team\u2019s lone striker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was pretty comfortable up there,\u201d he said. \u201cI played it in college obviously, so I was comfortable. It\u2019s a different physicality level at this level, so I had to prepare myself for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rookie also noted he\u2019d benefited from training with two players with international experience in Davies and Agudelo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve just told me to be confident when I go in and make those runs behind the defenders,\u201d said Hollinger-Janzen. \u201cThey\u2019ve given me cues of where to be when the ball is out wide, when the ball is in the middle, so it\u2019s been really helpful to have those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

And adding to Hollinger-Janzen’s\u00a0confidence\u00a0on Saturday, was that he was making the start in front of a season home record crowd of 25,203.<\/p>\n

“The crowd was awesome,” he said. “I can\u2019t thank them enough for all their support for our entire team. It definitely boosted the confidence going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even with\u00a0the excitement\u00a0of making his debut in the starting eleven, Femi was disappointed the team only left with a draw. The team heads to Los Angeles next weekend\u00a0to face the Galaxy on Sunday, with the Revolution still looking for its second win of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to mentally be ready for the game and we need these three points from Los Angeles,\u201d he said \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to forget about this game and move on to the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rookie Femi Hollinger-Janzen made his first start for the Revolution in front of a season record crowd on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42826,"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":[891,1431,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/femifeature.jpg?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42825"}],"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=42825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42827,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42825\/revisions\/42827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}