{"id":38870,"date":"2015-10-18T15:25:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T19:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38870"},"modified":"2015-10-18T15:26:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T19:26:37","slug":"agudelo-i-learned-so-much-from-charlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38870","title":{"rendered":"Agudelo: \u201cI Learned So Much From Charlie\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

While the results haven\u2019t been pretty for the New England Revolution the past few games, one positive has been the play of Juan Agudelo, who has made back-to-back starts for the first time since June. Agudelo took over the starting striker role from Charlie Davies for New England at the beginning of October, a role he started the season in, but had made just spot starts there since March.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been really good,\u201d said head coach Jay Heaps after Saturday\u2019s 1-0 loss to the Montreal Impact. \u201cHe\u2019s fully fit, he\u2019s fully strong. I think he\u2019s starting to show another level to his game.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a slow start to the season for Agudelo and Davies\u2019 recovery from an early injury, Agudelo was moved to the wing, and later, the bench, while Davies took the starting striker spot and never looked back, scoring nine goals by Aug. 1. Davies, however, hasn\u2019t scored since as the offense slumped, prompting a change to Agudelo, who had scored three times as a sub and in spot starts since August and had recovered from a nagging knee injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though the change up top hasn\u2019t helped the offense find the back of the net yet, chances have been there and Agudelo\u2019s found a way to make his presence felt and stay involved. While Davies had just a combined 28 touches through 144 minutes in his two most recent starts, Agudelo has 95 touches in 180 minutes starting the past two matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s done a great job of holding the ball up and getting everyone else involved in the attack,\u201d midfielder Scott Caldwell said of Agudelo\u2019s recent play.<\/p>\n

But in addition to holding the ball up well, which has been a strength of Agudelo\u2019s throughout his young career, the 22-year-old striker has used his time out of the starting line-up to add elements of his game, in part by watching the different style Davies\u2019 brings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understood that position a lot more seeing Charlie play and seeing how he stretches the defense,\u201d said Agudelo. \u201cI learned so much from Charlie and I thank him a lot because, you know I feel like I\u2019m the player that I am now because of his positioning and how I\u2019ve watched him while I was on the bench.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those changes to his game were something Heaps was looking for to add a different element to his team\u2019s offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think watching Charlie also helped Juan, in terms of you know Charlie plays it very differently,\u201d said Heaps. \u201cHe\u2019s a little bit more of a player who wants to get behind and looking to open defenses, and Juan always wants to hold it. But Juan needs to change the game up a little bit, he can\u2019t always just try to battle the two center backs and not have any deception to get behind or thread it behind. I think you want see Juan adding that to his game.\u2026 We\u2019re excited about where he\u2019s going. We\u2019re excited about the matchup of being able to have Juan and Charlie as good players playing off of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The improved play of Agudelo still hasn\u2019t been enough to ignite the offense, however, and with just one regular season game left, that has to change if the Revolution want to avoid a quick exit from the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re a very good possession team,\u201d said Agudelo. \u201cBut the killer instinct has to be there to shoot the ball when necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agudelo used time on bench to learn from Davies and add to his game up top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38871,"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":[891,1304,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/agudelomontreal.jpeg?fit=600%2C415&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38873,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870\/revisions\/38873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}