New England Revolution Reflect on Austin FC Collapse: “We Just Have to Learn From That"
It looked like the New England Revolution would walk out of Gillette Stadium with three points but disaster struck.
It looked like the New England Revolution would walk out of Gillette Stadium with three points but disaster struck.
In stoppage time Christian Makoun opted to try and chip Austin FC goalkeeper Brad Stuver instead of draining the clock by bringing the ball to the corner. This decision proved costly as Austin marched down the field and scored to tie the game.
While the match ended up a draw, it felt more like a lost. With FC Cincinnati suffering a rare loss, New England had a chance to take a chomp out of Cincy’s Eastern Conference lead but the Revs let the opportunity slip through their fingers.
Coach Richie Williams believes that New England has to learn from matches such as Saturday night’s draw.
“We just have to learn from that, game management,” Williams said. “We do talk about that on a regular basis, in terms of how to manage a game – at the beginning of the game, before halftime, at the start of the second half, and in different situations and scenarios. We do talk about it, and we have to learn from it. We still got a point, and I thought we still played well. We just need to keep our heads up because now we’re going to go on the road for three games. There’s not going to be an easy game. [We’re facing] good teams on the road. We just have to get ready and get rested up. Continuing to get guys back from injuries and then be ready to go on the road and compete together as a team on the road and try to get positive results.”
Beyond the win, it was also supposed to be a moment of elation for Andrew Farrell who made his return to the pitch after dealing with a quad strain. The defender played 90 minutes at right back and told The Blazing Musket that the team needed to do a better job of seeing out the game.
“Yeah, I think obviously, we had three points in the bag,” Farrell said when asked about the message from Williams after the draw. “I think maybe 20 seconds, 15 seconds left, I think it might have been a little bit over but just got to see the game out. Something that we talked about at the beginning of the game was just seeing the game out and being smart about the last two minutes 30 seconds. Obviously, we make a mistake of not going into the corner and seeing the game out but it's not just one player, there's multiple. So it's very disappointing. I kept on saying like ‘it sucks how we lost the game’ and it’s like we tied the game but it kind of feels like a loss. Now we have three tough games on the road and we got to make up for the points that we dropped.”
As Farrell stated, making up for the lost points won’t exactly be easy. New England heads on the road for the next three matches and if they play as they did on Saturday (particularly the last few minutes of the match) they could stumble down the table.
The result against Austin is a relic of the 2022 MLS season where everything seemed to go wrong for the club. If the Revolution don’t learn from their mistakes, they could suffer a similar disappointing fate (albeit still making the playoffs).
They are almost always too content to just sit on a 1 goal lead for 30, 40 minutes. They need a coach who wants to kill the game off, not sit back and try to hold on.
This is what happens when you don't play until the final whistle. Only have yourself to blame in only getting 1 point and not 3.