Bunbury: Loss ‘Difficult to Put Into Words’
- Updated: September 17, 2017
Photo credit: Kari Heistad/capturedimages.biz
Within a seven-minute span, Revolution midfielder Teal Bunbury went from potential hero to just another passerby during Saturday’s 3-1 loss at Sporting Kansas City.
Barely four minutes after the opening whistle, Bunbury scored to give his team just what it needed: an early lead in a hostile environment. But moments later, a Krisztian Nemeth red card undermined Bunbury’s best efforts, leaving the short-handed Revolution ripe for the picking.
“It’s difficult, really, to put into words,” Bunbury told the media after the match. “Mistakes I guess happen, but some things – you just know better. It was tough going down a man, especially playing away from home, especially playing in Kansas City.”
Nemeth, who played for Kansas City only two years ago, should have known better than to throw an elbow at Graham Zusi. He should’ve known that with VAR in play, someone is always watching.
But whether it was a classic mental lapse or a cavalier attempt at intimidating his former teammate, the end result spelled another long night for New England, which finished shorthanded for the second time in four days.
“As a striker particularly, it was really hard,” Revolution forward Kei Kamara told the media after the match, “because I was looking at Juan (Agudelo) in that last game when we went down and just knowing how much he was running around and I felt so bad for him and then that happened again today.
“I just said ‘man, it’s going to be the same thing just running around here.’ But we worked hard, we fought no matter what.”
The fight may have been there, but the execution clearly wasn’t.
Five minutes after Nemeth’s dismissal, Gerso Fernandes leveled it. To their credit, the Revolution nearly survived the half with the scoreline at one apiece. That was until Diego Rubio slid into a low cross from Fernandes to score the winner seconds before the break. Rubio rubbed it in when he scored again in the 57th minute.
“It was just a grind,” Kamara said. “We stuck in there, it was difficult, obviously we couldn’t get another goal – first good goal by Teal – but it was difficult, we couldn’t pick up another one but it’s just frustrating when we get an early card like that but hey, another victim to VAR.”
Classifying his club as a victim might be a stretch. After all, Nemeth’s dismissal was warranted. Ditto for the red cards issued to Xavier Kouassi and Antonio Delamea according to the Laws of the Game.
“It’s just frustrating, period,” Bunbury said. “It’s not anything added or less, when things are frustrating, that’s what they are. They happen in this sport unfortunately but at this level we have to all be alert, be bought into something and just be ready for whatever comes our way.”
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