HOUSTON – A hard-fought battle went the way of the hosts Wednesday night, as the New England Revolution failed to take any points away from their midweek trip to face Houston Dynamo FC. The Revs created a number of chances throughout the first half, but were made to rue not converting any of them, as the scoring was opened by a long-range effort from Houston’s Ezequiel Ponce in the 50th minute, before set piece goals from Revolution midfielder Carles Gil and Dynamo defender Erik Sviatchenko cancelled each other out.
Gil’s goal came from the first penalty kick awarded to the Revolution this season, and the Spaniard’s authoritative dispatch of the opportunity only four minutes after New England went behind rekindled the team’s hopes of getting a result in the game. After the full-time whistle blew, head coach Caleb Porter told the media that he felt his side was the better team on the night, but that simple mistakes in crucial moments cost them the result.
“Listen, so much good today,” Porter said. “I know it’s hard to think in that way when you lose the game 2-1, but that’s a very good team. We came on the road, and I thought we had the better of it, honestly. We played extremely well, both sides of the ball, we had good chances, we stifled them defensively – it was another game against a very good team where we’re right there in the game.
“For me, where we fell short is the details,” he continued. “And that’s the area of our team that we have to continue to work on. Finishing our chances – we should have been up, easily, one- or two-zero with the chances that we had and the way we played in that first half. We have to finish our chances there. And then the start of the second half, for me the detail of being a little bit more pragmatic. We, for some reason, all of a sudden started overplaying out of the back, and that’s not what we do … In that moment, the start of the second half playing on the road against a very good team that we knew was going to come out flying and pressing, we have to be smarter in those details of our decision making. And the guys know that. So, for me that’s a real learning lesson.”
Midfielder Matt Polster agreed that the team started the game off strong but let mental lapses take the game away from them.
“I think overall, when you look at our first half performance, I think we were the better team,” Polster said. “I thought we were very well-organized, our structure was very good, and how we played out of the back and how we were able to build up to the front half and create chances was also very good. Start of the second half, I think we were a little naïve coming out; Houston came out a little bit quicker, pressed a little bit higher, and we started to play a little bit more, which benefited them a little bit. They obviously picked a pass off, and they score a really good goal. But I think we were just naïve in how we came out in the second half, which led to them scoring.”
Porter also highlighted chances his side created in the second half but failed to put away, and added that it was disappointing to give up the second goal from a dead-ball situation after the amount of work the team puts in every week in training. However, he felt there were still many positives to take away from the game and, especially with a home encounter against D.C. United right around the corner, he wasn’t going to let himself or the team dwell on the negatives.
“I’m not going to lose sight of how well we played, how hard we played,” Porter said. “There’s so many good things today – we’re continuing to improve, we’re continuing to evolve. That’s a very good team, and I thought we were there to win the game, and it’s just little moments that we have to continue to learn from and improve on.”
