FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The hamstring injury that forced Juan Agudelo off in the first half of last weekend’s loss to the Montreal Impact seems likely to sideline the striker for a stretch of time, though exactly how long Agudelo will be on the shelf remains to be seen.
New England Revolution head coach Brad Friedel said on Tuesday morning that Agudelo is still being evaluated, and there’s hope that the 25-year-old could be back in the mix in the near future.
“It is really early. We’re hoping it’s not too serious,” said Friedel. “He’s going to have a couple further tests, so I don’t really have a timeframe, but I’m hoping it’s on the couple of weeks as opposed to over the month, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.”
Agudelo was replaced last Saturday by Krisztián Németh, who made his longest appearance (56 minutes) since last year’s season finale at Stade Saputo. Németh registered three shots while playing on the wing, including a rising effort that forced Impact goalkeeper Evan Bush into a strong save.
Agudelo’s likely absence for this weekend’s meeting with defending champions Toronto FC means Friedel will have to make at least one change to the group that has started the past three matches, but he’s confident that the options available – including Németh – have more than enough quality to fill the gap.
“We have a lot of very good players,” Friedel said. “We brought Kelyn Rowe and Krisztián Németh off the bench (in Montreal). We have players that can fill in when there’s injuries.
“I think more to the point is when players do get injured, it’s probably more difficult for them to fight their way back into the team. We never want to have one injury, of course, but when we do, we have a very good squad to be able to cope with it.”
