{"id":46824,"date":"2017-09-23T20:29:51","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T00:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=46824"},"modified":"2017-09-23T20:29:51","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T00:29:51","slug":"revs-show-fight-in-soehn-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=46824","title":{"rendered":"Revs Show Fight in Soehn Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 Tom Soehn\u2019s debut as the New England Revolution\u2019s head coach looked to likely to end in another all too familiar Revolution collapse after Toronto FC scored an 84th minute equalizer, just two minutes after New England took the lead. This one wouldn\u2019t follow the recent scripts, however, as the Revolution kept their heads up and retook the lead in the 87th minute, going on to beat first place Toronto for the second time this season<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really emotional week for everybody,\u201d said Soehn. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it could be topped, but it was topped tonight. I\u2019m really proud of the guy\u2019s effort. I thought when I look at how they competed tonight and supported each other and played for each other and defended, that\u2019s what games are made of and what teams are made of and tonight, I saw that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After giving up ten goals in their past two games leading up to former head coach Jay Heaps\u2019 firing, the Revolution held the league\u2019s best offense\u2014albeit an offense missing Giovinco and Jozy Altidore\u2014scoreless on Saturday night heading into the last ten minutes.<\/p>\n

That defensive performance allowed the Revolution to take the lead in the 82nd minute through substitute Lee Nguyen\u2019s deflected shot. Nguyen had entered the match for Teal Bunbury in the 64th minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game had opened up at that point,\u201d said Soehn. \u201cWe knew if we could hold them tight that they were going to open up because they send their backs high. At that point you knew Lee could make an impact and he made a huge impact tonight. I give him a lot of credit for entering a game in difficult circumstances and he stepped right into that lead role and in the end he\u2019s got a goal and an assist and that\u2019s the difference in the result, so a lot of credit to him tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[Soehn] just said \u2018the game is opening up,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201c\u2019This is a game where you\u2019re going to enjoy yourself, so have fun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Soehn urged the Revolution to focus on the all important next five minutes after taking the lead, but like has happened so frequently this season, a defensive lapse gave up the equalizer just two minutes later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was tough,\u201d said forward Kei Kamara. \u201cYou know as players that you score one, you\u2019ve got to be ready for the next five minutes and we fell asleep right there for just a little bit and we paid for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this time, despite all the emotion of the past couple weeks, the Revolution kept fighting and Nguyen found Kei Kamara off a short corner for the game winner in the 87th minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell we drew that up because we needed more emotion this week so we figured we tie it up and comeback late,\u201d Soehn joked. \u201cCredit to the guys because obviously it hurts when you give one up that quick, but they responded, so that\u2019s all you can ever ask.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a month where mental lapses had seen the team put their heads down and suffer large defeats on multiple occasions, the fight back on Saturday was a positive sight as the Revolution attempt to cling to their slim playoff hopes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just shows how resilient the guys are,\u201d said Nguyen. \u201cWe could\u2019ve folded. That\u2019s a tough way to go out \u2013 two away losses like that, didn\u2019t really give ourselves much of a chance, so our heads could\u2019ve gone down after that, but credit to the boys, we fought hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would\u2019ve been easy for us to kind of deflate with everything that\u2019s happened,\u201d said captain Chris Tierney. \u201cCredit to the boys. I think our energy was great tonight, so good response, good win.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the night, the inevitable question always looms for any coach with the interim tag, particular after the win: are they hoping to remain as head coach beyond the season?<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course [I\u2019m interested], said Soehn. \u201cBut, right now we\u2019re living one game at a time. I\u2019ve told guys that for five games we\u2019re going to enjoy ourselves and we\u2019re going to be the best team we can be. I\u2019m going to focus on that team thing over and over again and today when we came together as a team, you saw how dangerous that can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any hopes Soehn has of retaining the role will come from the team\u2019s performances with now four games remaining and the club needing to win all four\u2014along with getting help from other results\u2014to realistically have a shot at making the postseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a lot of emotion,\u201d said Soehn. \u201cThere\u2019s something missing when we go in the locker room to celebrate a win and Jay [Heaps] is not there, but pulling them together on the field and kind of living off that moment, which, it\u2019s a great moment. You can look at a million jobs in the world and you don\u2019t get too many highs like that when you pull out a result like that, especially at a time where we needed it. We took that moment to reflect on it, to make sure we remember how good it felt, so we can replicate it that. That\u2019s our mentality going for the next one. We came in, we\u2019ll celebrate it, but it\u2019s back to work on Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New England showed spirit often lacking in recent weeks in comeback win over league leaders on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46832,"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":[891,49,888,1530],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Image-1-2.jpg?fit=1024%2C682","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46824"}],"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=46824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46834,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46824\/revisions\/46834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}