HOUSTON – We knew last weekend that the New England Revolution would be playing in the 2014 MLS Cup Playoffs. Now we know that they’ll be headed directly to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Thursday night’s 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo guarantees that the Revs will finish in one of the East’s top three spots, keeping them out of the midweek play-in game following next weekend’s regular-season finales.
It’s something that wasn’t lost on head coach Jay Heaps heading into BBVA Compass Stadium.
“It’s huge. We knew we were going for that,” Heaps said. “As you could tell at the end there, we risked a lot to go for it, because we knew that three points was going to put us in a position not to have a game midweek.”
Heaps was referencing New England’s attack-minded substitutions as they pushed for a second-half comeback. After being forced to bring on Kevin Alston for the injured Andrew Farrell in the 50th minute, Heaps turned to Charlie Davies and Jermaine Jones, exhausting his three subs when the game was just an hour old.
The moves turned out to be exactly the spark the Revolution needed. Alston and Jones combined to set up Lee Nguyen’s stunning 65th-minute equalizer, while Davies was involved in the buildup – along with Darrius Barnes – to Nguyen’s league-leading eighth game-winning goal in the dying stages.
“Tonight was a team effort all the way through,” said Heaps. “The second half I thought our subs came in and really impacted the game. Kevin, first of all, coming in for the injured Farrell. Charlie and Jermaine just literally took the game over.”
Nguyen, as he has been all season, was the center-piece of New England’s comeback, scoring twice to raise his goal total to 17 on the year. It’s the most goals a Revolution player has scored in a single season since Taylor Twellman also had 17 back in 2005, while it’s tied for the third-best single-season total in Revs history.
And in typical Nguyen fashion, the MVP candidate passed all the praise on to his teammates.
“The guys have been doing a great job all season long finding me in great spots in and around the box,” he said. “I’ve got to reward them.”
Nguyen will have one more regular-season game to bolster his MVP case as the Revs will close out the schedule next weekend at home against Toronto FC. A win in that game would assure the Revolution a top-two seed in the East, and potentially could lift them into first depending on D.C. United’s results the next two weekends.
The Revs will get a bit of rest this weekend before turning their attention to TFC, an important final test before they’ll kick off their postseason run the first weekend in November.
“To come here (to Houston) and get the job done is just big-time and says a lot about this team,” said Barnes. “After we clinched a playoff spot last weekend it would’ve been easy to kind of take our foot off the gas a little bit, but this team wants to achieve more. Tonight, we showed that.”
