FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – For a player who averages a couple goals a year, defender Brandon Bye picked quite the time to open his 2024 account. With the season on the line and the game still goalless against Nashville SC, the Michigan native truly rose to the occasion, getting his head on the end of a beautifully curled cross from winger Luca Langoni in the 86th minute to seal all three points for a New England Revolution side that is refusing to throw in the towel late in this MLS campaign.
Overall, the game was a tense, back-and-forth affair, with both teams finding a number of chances. The Revs defense was stout, however, with goalkeeper Aljaž Ivačič recording an important four saves to preserve the clean sheet while players up and down the field put their bodies on the line to win back balls, with midfielder Matt Polster and defender Peyton Miller among the standouts.
Assistant coach Pablo Moreira, filling in on the sideline for the suspended head coach Caleb Porter, said after the game that he was pleased to see the team execute so well on the gameplan after a strong week of training, saying that the squad’s aggressive mindset, particularly in defense, set the tone for the rest of the game.
“I think it’s just front-foot; we were aggressive from the jump,” Moreira said. “I think we had that front-foot mentality of, ‘If they’re going to play the balls into those spaces, our defensive midfielders have to make them feel it, our center backs have to make them feel it.’ Because those are tough spaces to occupy. We see what happens with Carles [Gil], we see what happens with [Esmir Bajraktarević], when those guys are in pockets, what the other team does to us, and we kind of just initiated that. Initiating it, being the aggressor, is what we wanted to see – you set the tone. And they did. So, we’re very happy with our back line, our back six, they were a unit. And I would also say, I would throw in our wingers, and obviously it starts with the 9 and 10, and I think Carles and Giacomo [Vrioni] did the job that we asked them to do. But I thought the two lines of four were excellent, and we were very difficult to play through because we were so aggressive.”
The winning goal was somewhat unique in that it did not involve Gil, who owns 16 goal involvements this season. The captain is still level with club legend Steve Ralston for the Revolution’s all-time regular season assists record, and will undoubtedly claim the title for himself very soon. But Moreira highlighted the fact that having a prolific attacking talent like Gil on the pitch can actually disorient opposing defenses into leaving other threats open, as was the case when Langoni connected with Bye.
Moreira explained: “I think Carles is – and I know this from being on the opposing end playing New England and obviously having them here – it's not necessarily, ‘You always have to play through Carles,’ because a lot of times, just the spaces that he occupies free up other people. You saw other people get involved here and take initiative and run behind the backline, not only just wait for Carles and see what he does with the ball.
“But Carles is great in the sense where great players – for instance Nashville, when they made a sub, they man marked him for a good amount of time. And instead of getting frustrated, we have a little chat and he's smart about it. He goes to spaces on the field and occupies spaces on the field that naturally attract defenders, which now allows our other guys to have more time and space. And you saw on the goal, there's a lot of attention near him. And then Luca is able to get a cross into Brandon and excellent, excellent finish. So again, you see there's a lot of guys that can pick up the slack in terms of scoring and being an attacking presence. It's not all Carles.”
For his own part, Langoni said post-match that his own level is heightened by playing alongside the Spaniard, adding that he looked forward to continuing to connect with him in attack.
“Yeah, the truth is [Gil’s] a very good player,” Langoni said via translator. “He can find spaces anywhere on the field. I think we’re going to take advantage of playing next to one another and we’ll help the team.”
And on the defensive side of things, Ivačič recognized the importance of this win, both in terms of the league table and the squad’s mentality, but said that they didn’t have time to celebrate it.
“It felt good,” the keeper said. “We needed those three points. We’ve been struggling for a couple of games now. I think this was a final for us. We needed three points and we achieved that. But now we have to keep going, because we have a new game on Wednesday, and we need three points again.”
Ivačič added: “It wasn’t easy for us. The last couple of games, we’ve been struggling a lot. Our life is different when we’re losing than when we’re winning. It’s not easy, when we’re losing obviously. That’s why we needed this win tonight, just to feel better. When you wake up tomorrow, you feel better when you win. We needed these three points and I’m very happy we achieved that.”
And Moreira affirmed that the team had no intentions of giving up, saying that he was glad that the team got the win and that he knew they would continue to build from here.
Moreira said that the team did “everything we asked of them, and I'm glad that they got rewarded for that because they were very disciplined. They had a great week of training and then, ultimately, I think it showed today in the game. We are just trying to build off of that and keep collecting wins. You never know what is going to happen, but I can tell you this: We’re not a team to count out.”
