{"id":44645,"date":"2017-03-20T23:16:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T03:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=44645"},"modified":"2017-03-20T23:18:34","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T03:18:34","slug":"kouassi-gets-high-praise-in-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=44645","title":{"rendered":"Kouassi Gets High Praise Following Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo credit: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz<\/p><\/div>\n

Few expected Xavier Kouassi to make his Revolution debut on Saturday at Dallas after gathering only a handful of minutes during the preseason. But during the course of the contest, he left little doubt he was ready.<\/p>\n

Starting at defensive midfielder some 13 months after he signed a designated player deal, the Ivory Coast international completed 81.8 percent of his passes, collected three interceptions, and recorded three clearances in Saturday’s loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was outstanding,\u201d Revolution midfielder Scott Caldwell told the media after the match. \u201cReally, really good positionally and ball-winning. It\u2019s great to see after waiting so long for him, and seeing he\u2019s healthy and back at it with the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

His journey to Saturday’s debut was a long and winding one. Days after signing his future contract with the Revolution last February, Kouassi tore his ACL in a match with Swiss side FC Sion. The injury ended any chance he’d suit up for New England after his arrival in July.<\/p>\n

But the 27-year-old midfielder was far from fazed by the setback. When he re-joined the team for the preseason, Kouassi trained with a large brace on his leg as he worked on his fitness. He was limited to a mere 23 minutes over two preseason games, which appeared to be an indication his official debut was several weeks away.<\/p>\n

Then came Saturday’s match, which featured a gritty and energetic performance from the guy wearing the navy blue no. 12 shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like he wasn\u2019t afraid to step into some challenges, as if he wasn\u2019t afraid to get injured again,\u201d Revolution midfielder\/forward Juan Agudelo told the media after the match. \u201cIt\u2019s very bright for us to have a player like that back.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Revolution coach Jay Heaps hinted that Kouassi will only get better as he gets more minutes, he admitted that subbing him out after 79 minutes – a run much longer than most expected – was far from an easy choice. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard to take him out,\u201d Heaps told the media after the match. \u201cI thought Kouassi did a really good job. He showed his physicality and he broke up plays.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was no shortage of compliments in the Revs locker room for Xavier Kouassi following his debut. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44646,"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":true,"_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":[891,888,892,1445],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Kouassi.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\/44645"}],"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=44645"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44651,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44645\/revisions\/44651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}