{"id":24487,"date":"2014-03-15T23:10:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T03:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24487"},"modified":"2014-03-15T23:37:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T03:37:26","slug":"mystery-surrounds-goncalves-absence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=24487","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Surrounds Gon\u00e7alves’ Absence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

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

The absence of New England Revolution captain Jose Goncalves from the club’s\u00a0gameday\u00a018 on Saturday at Philadelphia was a curious one by any measure. But there is conflicting information regarding the circumstances that led to the situation.<\/p>\n

During the match, veteran soccer journalist Ives Galarcep revealed via Twitter that Goncalves’ absence was due to the captain’s unwillingness to set aside contract squabbles,\u00a0and\u00a0that the\u00a0decision not to include the 2013 Defender of the Year was made\u00a0earlier in\u00a0the week.<\/p>\n

Where is Jose Goncalves? Sources tell me Heaps told Goncalves to (A) snap out of contract-unhappiness funk or (B) not play. He chose B. #MLS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Ives Galarcep (@SoccerByIves) March 15, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Heaps to Goncalves ultimatum did NOT go down today. Happened during the week. Defender of the Year clearly unhappy w\/his contract
\n\u2014 Ives Galarcep (@SoccerByIves) March 15, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Goncalves was\u00a0present at training on Tuesday, but was not spotted at training on Wednesday, which appears to confirm that the decision to exclude Goncalves from the gameday 18\u00a0was, indeed, made days prior to Saturday’s clash.<\/p>\n

But according to a source close to Goncalves, the 2013 Defender of the Year was never given an ultimatum.<\/p>\n

“Jose was not presented with an ultimatum about playing and he wanted to play for the team in the game against Philadelphia,” the source said. “He strongly supports the team and wants to help them in any way he can.”<\/p>\n

Following the game, Heaps was asked about Goncalves’ absence on the 18, but he declined to give specifics.<\/p>\n

“Our focus is to put the best players on the field for this game,” Heaps said. “We tried to draw up a gameplan for this game. We wanted to put the best players that we could to get through this match.”<\/p>\n

Prior to Saturday’s game, Goncalves had played every single minute of every\u00a0MLS match for the Revolution. He was originally brought to New England via loan from Swiss side Sion FC, which agreed to bankroll the majority of Goncalves’ salary in 2013.<\/p>\n

But after the Revolution exercised the purchase option contained in the loan agreement, Goncalves expressed his displeasure with the\u00a0terms of his 2014 contract, even though it reportedly made him the second-highest paid defender in MLS.<\/p>\n

He saw sporadic action during the preseason (185 minutes),\u00a0but started\u00a0in last week’s\u00a04-0 season-opening loss in Houston,\u00a0which marked the Revolution’s worst defeat in nearly four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jose Goncalves was curiously unavailable for selection in Saturday’s clash at PPL Park. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24492,"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":[115,190,49,556],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Jose-1.png?fit=492%2C259&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24487"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24503,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24487\/revisions\/24503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}