NE Revolution vs. Columbus Crew
May 19, 2018
Columbus Crew 1-New England Revolution 0
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Revolution coach Brad Friedel knew he’d need to make changes going into Saturday’s matchup against Columbus. Unfortunately for him, those changes didn’t exactly work to perfection.
Using a 3-5-2 formation and plugging Cristian Penilla into the playmaker’s role with Diego Fagundez suspended, the Revolution didn’t generate enough offensively, and were doomed by a late Columbus goal to fall 1-0 to their longtime rivals.
“I thought it was a better formation to put out, so we could match up more one-v-one against the players out on the field,” Friedel said. “The message to the players was no different than it always is. In the first half, I did want us to be a little bit better on the ball, and in the second half, I thought we were.”
But the improvement Friedel saw after the break wasn’t enough to prevent Columbus from scoring the deciding goal in the 85th minute, at which point Lalas Abubakar flashed a header into the back of New England’s net.
That said, it wasn’t for lack of effort that New England suffered its second home shutout loss of the season.
Sensing the need to tweak the system weeks after the first Revolution-Crew encounter, which ended in a 2-2 draw, Friedel decided to shake up his lineup for the sequel.
NE Revolution vs. Columbus Crew
May 19, 2018
To wit, Friedel went with a three-man backline of Andrew Farrell, Antonio Delamea, and Jalil Anibaba. On the wings, Chris Tierney and Brandon Bye were deployed as wingers/fullbacks to help jump start an offense that was missing the creativity of Fagundez.
“We thought it would match up well against them,” said Bye. “They put their wingers pretty high. I thought we did a really good job of it. We worked hard on it during training this week and we were ready for it.”
The idea: get service to the likes of Teal Bunbury and Penilla, who was asked to take on playmaking duties rather than creating from the wing.
But theory wasn’t put into practice particularly well. The Revolution passed at a subpar 66.8 percent, with Penilla (22.2 percent) and Bye (35.7 percent) not particularly effective with their distribution.
“We know their strengths,” Crew SC coach Gregg Berhalter said. “We know that they create a lot of goal scoring opportunities off pressing teams in their half. So our game plan was to avoid that and play in their half.
“I think for the most part we did a good job of executing that. We didn’t give them any opportunities off of pressing, and then they had to create by themselves. I think we did a good job, our defense in limiting that creation part of it.”
With New England’s offense spending much of the match trying to find its rhythm, it seemed as if a draw would be a satisfactory result for the hosts. But the Crew found an opportunity to pull the rug from under the Revolution late.
On a perfectly-executed set piece, Abubakar raced into the box to meet a Federico Higuain corner, beating his mark before he flashed a header right into the back of the net. And just like that, the hosts were down a goal late against one of the best defenses in the league.
“We always practice this stuff, so this was like practice,” Abubakar said. “It wasn’t a surprise to any of us, because we just have to make the run, because that’s what we do every single time at practice. We just need to execute and we did that on the field.”
Despite the scoreline, Friedel said the loss wasn’t the result of the system, but rather, a momentary lapse.
“I didn’t feel in danger at all on losing the game, and then we conceded a very sloppy goal on a set piece,” Friedel said. “That can be something we only have ourselves to blame, but I thought the players adapted themselves very, very well to the system.”
Columbus Crew
NE Revolution
