By Michel Pierre-Louis
The good news for New England fans is that the Revolution got their first point of the season. The bad news, they are still looking for their first goal. The New England revolution played to a scoreless draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps, in their home opener on Saturday afternoon with over 13,000 fans in attendance.
The Revolution looked very threatening early on in the game, especially with a very active Saer Sene, who got his first start of the season. The Whitecaps however, where able to withstand numerous attack waves by the home side; and the two teams would head into halftime on a scoreless note.
The Revolution started the second half with the same lineup, and despite a handful of chances, neither side was able to break the deadlock. Teal Bunbury made his third consecutive start for the Revs; however, he was quiet most of the afternoon. Diego Fagundez was largely absent in the first half, and was a little more visible with a couple of chances in the second half. Revs’ head coach Jay Heaps made a handful of changes as the second half progressed with Daigo Kobayashi, Dimitry Imbongo, and Scott Caldwell all entered the match for the locals replacing Sene, Lee Nguyen and Kelyn Rowe respectively; however, none of them were able to spark the attack for the home side.
It should be noted that midway through the second half, the Revolution got a scare when Saer Sene went down and clutched his left knee. He laid on the field for a few, he was able to continue before being substituted in the 58th minute.
Following the match, New England’s head coach Jay Heaps admitted that his club had a rough start to begin the season, but he sees some progress after playing at home for the first time this season.
“Obviously, this has not been an ideal start. You go on the road for two difficult games, but we got home and I thought at least we put it together in some areas.” Said Heaps. “We defended well, we didn’t give away a ton. I thought our backline was really good tonight. I thought (Andrew) Farrell did an excellent job. A.J. (Soares), Jose (Goncalves) and (Chris) Tierney all defended really well with the help of (Andy) Dorman. Their chances were limited, I don’t mind if we have that many more chances than the other team. I think in the end, we’ll get more points. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough.”
The Revolution will go on a two game road trip (San Jose next week, and D.C. the following week) before returning home to host the Dynamo. It is certainly worrisome that after 270 minutes of action the Revs are still looking for their first goal; however, it should be noted that they played soundly defensively today and Revs keeper Shuttleworth had a mostly uneventful afternoon. After having conceded 5 goals in the first two games, it would appear the defense is getting it together. MLS defender of the year for last term Jose Goncalves returned to the starting lineup after not even being called upon to make the trip last week in Philadelphia. It remains to be seen when the offense will start producing, as Jay Heaps put it: “We have to be better offensively.”
[soccer-info id=’512′ type=’results’ title=’Results’ /]
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