FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – At some point when Teal Bunbury was a kid playing youth soccer in the suburbs of Minneapolis – dreams of a professional career just a glint in his eye – a coach told him the Golden Rule of Sports, the lesson we all learned as youngsters: play to the whistle.
That lesson served Bunbury well on Saturday night at Gillette Stadium, where his heads-up play ultimately bagged him the only goal of the game in a massive 1-0 win for the New England Revolution over league-leading Sporting Kansas City.
The decisive sequence unfolded in the 44th minute. Diego Fagundez took a touch at the top of the box as he shaped to shoot, but the hard-charging Roger Espinoza got a foot in to disrupt the effort. The ball popped free to Bunbury – a full two yards behind the backline – and the linesman raise his flag for offside.
Bunbury initially paused, but then turned and finished past Sporting KC goalkeeper Tim Melia to the near post. He didn’t celebrate, resigned to the fact that the goal was likely being negated for offside.
Fagundez, however, knew something everyone else didn’t.
“I was trying to take a touch and shoot, and I got unlucky where someone coming from behind played it,” Fagundez said. “I remember Teal scoring and they said, ‘We’re going to review it.’ I told Teal, ‘It’s a goal. Don’t even think about it. It’s a goal.’”
On-field referee Dave Gantar did, in fact, signal that Video Assistant Referee Geoff Gamble was checking the play, and replays confirmed what Fagundez had known all along – Sporting midfielder Espinoza had played the ball to Bunbury, not Fagundez, meaning Bunbury couldn’t be offside.
The goal stood.
“As a striker, you want to be prepared, opportunistic,” said Bunbury. “Whenever the chances come your way, you want to be ready. I try to prepare for that. You could probably see my reaction – after I got the ball and it went in the back of the net, I thought, ‘Probably was offside.’
“I was just in the right spot at the right time. That’s my job, to be ready.”
It was the fourth goal in the past five games for Bunbury – now just two off the league lead in that category – and it stood as the winner as the Revs shut out Sporting KC, previously unbeaten in seven (5-0-2) and leading the league in just about every imaginable offensive category.
“Every player has got to be ready and prepared,” said Bunbury, who noted that he’d never scored a goal quite like that in his nine-year MLS career. “As a striker, that’s one of the things that I need to take pride in … That was my job, doing that, and we’ve just got to move forward now.”
