FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – For Charlie Davies, success means only one thing.
“I’m at the point in my career where I just want to win,” he said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to win. Whether that’s stretching [an opponent’s shape], scoring goals, or just being a pest and a nuisance for the other team – whatever the team needs me to do, I’m willing to do it.”
Davies has the ability to be the New England Revolution’s go-to goal scorer. He proved as much when he tied for the league lead in goals (4) during last year’s MLS Cup Playoffs, including a dramatic double in the second leg of the Eastern Conference Championship to send the Revs to MLS Cup.
But here’s the rub – the Revs don’t always need Davies to be scoring goals. Not with a host of other attacking talent (Juan Agudelo, Teal Bunbury, Diego Fagundez, Lee Nguyen, Kelyn Rowe, etc.) perfectly capable of picking up the goal-scoring load on occasion.
What Davies can always provide – regardless of his own stats – is potentially far more valuable anyway.
“He’s so fast and he has a lot of pace,” head coach Jay Heaps said of Davies, noting the speedy forward’s propensity to get behind defenders. “What that does is it makes one center back worry about him and the other think about him. So now they’re dropping off and they’re giving a little bit more depth and cover, and it opens up enough space for us.”
With Davies on the field, New England’s defenders and midfielders will always have an outlet to play the ball over the top and let Davies run onto it. When that happens throughout the course of a game, opposing center backs realize the need to drop off and respect Davies’ speed, pulling them out of shape.
Quite often that leaves gaps in between the opposing backline and midfield – and it’s in those pockets of space where creative players like Nguyen and Rowe truly thrive.
“Last year you were able to see just how much space Lee got underneath when I’m able to pull away the center backs,” Davies said. “There’s a lot more space for him.
“Last game he had a ton of space. I don’t think we found him as much as we could’ve, but it makes a huge difference for us as a team. I know that helps the team, so I’m willing to make those runs play after play just to make sure that our team has success.”
It was Davies – along with Agudelo and Daigo Kobayashi – who made a hard run into the box to open the space for Rowe’s ice-breaking goal this past weekend. Although it doesn’t show up on the score sheet, it was an immediate contribution from Davies in his first start of the 2015 season.
Davies went 83 minutes against the Earthquakes as he’s just about fully recovered from a nagging calf injury, and although he hasn’t been full strength just yet this season, he still feels he’s well ahead of the curve when compared to where he was just 12 months ago.
“I’m so far ahead of where I was last year,” Davies said. “I’m fit, confident and it’s one of those things where you’re just trying to keep getting better and keep pushing yourself.”
And with his last comment, of course, Davies shifted the focus back to the team.
“I’m excited to see how far we go this year,” he said.
