{"id":28092,"date":"2014-09-26T23:22:26","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T03:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28092"},"modified":"2014-09-27T00:56:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T04:56:17","slug":"jones-heroics-lift-revs-to-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28092","title":{"rendered":"Jones’ Heroics Lift Revs to Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

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

Jermaine Jones came to the New England Revolution\u2019s rescue on Friday at Sporting Park – and not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n

With time ticking away in tied game, Jones blasted a long-range strike in the 85th minute to\u00a0restore a\u00a0Revolution lead that\u00a0had been chopped down by a\u00a0pair of second-half Sporting Kansas City strikes, helping his club secure a dramatic\u00a03-2 win.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 tally cancelled out a lackluster second half performance by the Revolution, which saw them take their 2-0 first half lead\u2014furnished by goals from Kelyn Rowe and Jose Goncalves\u2014and flush it away by allowing Kansas City\u2019s Dom Dwyer and Paulo Nagamura to equalize in a two-minute span.<\/p>\n

The win is the Revolution\u2019s sixth in their last seven matches, and puts them in a tie with Kansas City for second place in the Eastern Conference. With Jones in the starting lineup, the Revolution are now\u00a04-0-0. The result\u00a0also marked the locals’ first ever victory at Sporting Park, as well as their first\u00a0road win against\u00a0Kansas City\u00a0since April 9, 2008.<\/p>\n

The Revolution lined up in their familiar 4-1-4-1 formation,\u00a0but with a\u00a0few noticeable wrinkles to the starting XI. Andrew Farrell moved from right back to central defense in place of an injured AJ Soares while Kevin Alston took over at Farrell\u2019s position. Kansas City, who entered the match on a two-game home losing streak, was without All-Star center back Aurelien Collin.<\/p>\n

New England bossed the opening half with speedy play and decisive passes and runs into the offensive third. Dwyer uncorked a fifth minute freekick wide of goal for the game\u2019s first chance, which was followed up by non-stop attacks by the Revolution.<\/p>\n

In the 22nd minute,\u00a0 Jones ran down the right flank and served the ball to the back post for a wide open Rowe. With Kansas City\u2019s back line and their goalkeeper ball-watching, Rowe, unmarked, slammed a shot between the legs of Kronberg and the right post before it finally bulged the net. It was Rowe\u2019s fourth goal of the season.<\/p>\n

Goncalves doubled the Revolution\u2019s lead in the 35th minute off a Kansas City giveaway in midfield. Jorge Claros played former Revolution midfielder Benny Feilhaber following a throw-in, as Goncalves rushed in to steal the ball away. Goncalves trapped the ball, left Feilhaber dispossessed on the turf, then ran up the spine of Kansas City\u2019s midfield and back line before going one-on-one with Matt Besler and sending a left-footed shot to the inside of the far post for the 2-0 lead and his first tally of the year.<\/p>\n

The tables turned in the second half as Kansas City stopped submitting and asserted themselves offensively. In response, the Revolution\u00a0allowed their hosts\u00a0mount a\u00a0series of\u00a0attacks and\u00a0stayed penned in deep.<\/p>\n

In the 54th minute, Kevin Ellis played Paulo Nagamura in behind the defense off a pass from behind half field. Nagamura entered the penalty area, then fired over Bobby Shuttleworth to cut the lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n

Two full minutes hadn’t yet passed before\u00a0the equalizer appeared.\u00a0Graham Zusi played the ball wide left to Toni Dovale, who crossed to the back post looking for an open player. Nagamura ran onto the service and headed the ball across the face of goal to Dwyer, who redirected the service into the back of the net easily. The goal, which capped off a dream response by Kansas City, was Dwyer\u2019s team-high 20th of the season.<\/p>\n

Prior to Jones\u2019 game-winning strike, the Revolution tried to counter against Kansas City\u2019s attack, but were unsuccessful. Shuttleworth, who hasn\u2019t notched a cleansheet since Aug. 30, stayed in form and collected four saves. Shutteworth stopped drives by Zusi (59′), Dwyer (62′), and Nagamura (64′), all after Kansas City equalized.<\/p>\n

It was Jones, though, that stuck with the play and helped the Revolution in transitions, even after Kansas City discovered their offense. On the decisive play, Nguyen took control of the ball during a couner-attack. He played a simple, short pass to Jones, who took two touches, saw that he was uncontested, then\u00a0uncorked the deciding strike with the match\u00a0nearing its conclusion.<\/p>\n

The Revolution next play on Oct. 4 at Gillette Stadium against the Columbus Crew.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jermaine Jones scored the game-winning goal to give the Revs a wild 3-2 win over Sporting K.C. on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28095,"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":[847,3],"tags":[786,1315,190,1300,49,861,1274,68],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/JJ-131.png?fit=480%2C258&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28092"}],"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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28100,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28092\/revisions\/28100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}