Teal Bunbury (center) celebrates his fourth goal of the season in the Revs 1-0 win over Sporting Kansas City (photo credit: Kari Heistad/Captured Images)
New England Revolution 1-Sporting Kansas City 0
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – On any other day, Revolution striker Teal Bunbury would’ve just tapped it to the keeper after hearing the whistle and seeing the assistant referee raise the flag. Thankfully for him, Saturday was not one of those days.
In the 44th minute of a scoreless match against Sporting Kansas City, Bunbury appeared to grab a pass from Diego Fagundez and score from an offside position. But that was before referee Dave Gantar ruled the goal valid when VAR determined Sporting midfielder Roger Espinoza – and not Fagundez – poked the ball to Bunbury, thus nullifying any offside call.
“You could probably see my reaction after I got the ball and it went in the back of the net,” Bunbury said after the 1-0 win. “I was like, ‘It was probably offside.’ They reviewed it, saw that it went off a Kansas City player, so just in the right spot at the right time.”
The fact that Bunbury was in the right place at the right time was a rare fortuitous break for the hosts, who’ve been burned all too often by the VAR. Last year, the Revolution had six of seven video reviews go against them, much to the chagrin of the supporters.
Naturally, the guests weren’t impressed by the decision.
“I’m still trying to absorb it because there’s a lot of things that happened,” Sporting coach Peter Vermes
Claude Dielna and the New England Revolution defense held the potent Sporting Kansas City attack scoreless on Saturday night (photo credit: Kari Heistad)
said. “The linesman puts his flag up for off-sides – a lot of times what happens with players, especially in the situation where everybody sees that the player was off-sides, everybody kind of stops. Not saying that’s an excuse, but that happens.”
But to say Saturday’s match came down to Bunbury’s controversial goal would be to ignore the performance put together by a defense that managed to shut out one of the best teams in the league.
Sporting Kansas City, which routed Vancouver 6-0 last week, managed only four shots on goal Saturday. While the backline deserves much of the credit, Revolution coach Brad Friedel also cited his attacking players for their efforts as well.
“The goalkeeper and back four played well,” Revolution coach Brad Friedel said. “But I thought our transition when we lost the ball was excellent. I thought Wilfried Zahibo and Luis Caicedo and Juan Agudelo and Cristian Penilla and Diego and Teal, in the transition to keep in our block, very compact at all times, was outstanding.
“The system that we want to play, everyone has to work tremendously hard and I thought each and every player that played tonight did that.”
One player with a front row seat to that collective effort was Revolution center back Jalil Anibaba, who praised the midfielders for helping out the defense.
“We know anytime we’re able to get something on the end of a long ball from the opposition, our midfielders are very good at picking up the second balls,” Anibaba said. “Like I spoke about before, Kansas City is a team that is always going to put everything into the game. I knew it was going to be intense, fair, hard match and an entertaining one as well and it turned out to be true.”
Intense? You bet. Saturday’s match was one of the biggest for the upstart Revolution this season, who’ve now collected 14 points in their first eight matches of the season.
While Friedel and Anibaba were correct to cite teamwork as the key to the victory, a special tip of the cap has to go to Bunbury, whose situational awareness effectively turned one point into three.
“As a striker, you want to be prepared and opportunistic whenever the chances come your way,” Bunbury said. “You want to be ready, try to prepare for that. That’s my job, to kind of just be ready.”
NE Revolution
Sporting Kansas City
