FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Juan Agudelo, Kei Kamara and Lee Nguyen all have the skillsets to serve as the focal point of an attack, and all three have done so at different points in their careers. But what’s made the New England Revolution so successful in recent weeks is the absence of a focal point.
Instead the Revs have struck a perfect balance in their attack, particularly in last weekend’s 3-1 win over the Montreal Impact at Stade Saputo. Agudelo and Kamara operated as strike partners with Nguyen floating beneath, and the result was one of New England’s best attacking performances of the season.
“It was good to get Lee and Juan and Kei together in a fluid attack,” said head coach Jay Heaps. “I think that was the key, that we were able to find the ball and all of them had a lot of touches, and all of them found the ball in different and dangerous areas.
“I thought that was what we did really well. We balanced our attack. Kei had 40 touches. Juan had 40 touches. Lee had 55 touches. And those (touches) were dangerous in where we were getting the ball.”
Kelyn Rowe and Diego Fagundez were also heavily involved in the attack from midfield, with Rowe factoring into all three Revolution goals against Montreal. Rowe now has two goals and three assists in the last three games, while Fagundez has one goal and three assists in that same span.
With his first goal at Stade Saputo, Rowe became New England’s sixth different goal scorer in the past three games (along with Kamara, Agudelo, Nguyen, Fagundez and Chris Tierney), and it’s that kind of balance that has the Revolution feeling confident about their attack heading into the final four games.
“It’s a lot of options, and that’s what we want,” said Kamara, who scored almost 40 percent of Columbus Crew SC’s goals last season. “It’s not just supposed to be a focus on one guy saying ‘that’s where all the goals are going to come from,’ because when you can balance like that, it makes things a lot easier.”
“It gives everyone confidence that anyone can score,” said Heaps. “That’s how we’ve always functioned when we’re at our best. It’s a group effort and different guys score the goals, but it takes the entire group to build a goal.”
