FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – With just six games remaining in the regular season and five points separating the New England Revolution from the playoff places in the Eastern Conference, new signing Guillermo Hauché will be looked upon to make an immediate impact in Foxborough.
Head coach Brad Friedel, for one, is confident that’s exactly what the 25-year-old attacker will do.
“When you only have [six] games left in the regular season, you need someone that’s going to be able to come in and put a mark on things right away,” Friedel said. “Guillermo will certainly be able to do that.
“He’s an attack-minded player. He’s very gifted on the ball. He has a completely different skill-set, different type of player, different stature of player than we have on the team.”
Hauché, whose career has taken him to the top flights in Argentina and Chile, won’t be available for selection until his receives his P-1 Visa and international transfer certificate, but the Revs are hoping that process could be completed ahead of Saturday night’s visit from the Chicago Fire.
“We’re hoping day-to-day that his paperwork comes through,” Friedel said. “Fingers crossed that it’ll be in time for this weekend.”
In the meantime, Hauché has the benefit of training daily with his new teammates, and he got a bit of a head-start on the acclimation process as he trained with the Revs for a full week before he was signed ahead of the roster freeze last Thursday.
That time on the field in Foxborough gave Friedel and his staff a chance not only to assess Hauché’s technical ability, but also his fitness and his fit within the current crop of Revolution players.
“We’re very fortunate that he was out of contract with the circumstances that he had, and we’re very fortunate that we were able to get him in and have a look to make sure he was fit,” said Friedel. “It was essential that we were able to see that, because there are quite a few players out there that are out of contract, but they haven’t been training.”
Friedel said Hauché can play on either wing, as an attacking midfielder, or as a second forward, and he’ll provide a welcome spark for a Revolution attack that has scored just three goals in the past five games despite creating several chances in that span.
“He’s a goal scorer and a goal creator,” Friedel said of the Argentine attacker. “He has a very good attitude about the game. He works on both sides of the ball. He also adds another dimension to scoring goals, whether it be with his final pass, whether it be with his cross, or his strike himself.
“He’ll be a welcome addition to an already good squad.”
