If anyone thought that a draw would’ve been just as good as a win for the playoff-bound Revolution in Houston on Thursday, they were mistaken. It wasn’t so much a matter of avoiding complacency. Rather, it was about something much more tangible: a top-3 finish in the standings, which allows a team to avoid a mid-week wild-card matchup.
To that end, the Revolution came out of the locker room for the second half intent to not only climb out of a deficit created by a 37th-minute Giles Barnes strike, but to overtake their orange-clad opponent. And that’s exactly what they did in the final 45 minutes to stake a 2-1 win over the Dynamo.
“It’s huge,” Revolution coach Jay Heaps told the media after the match. “We knew we were going for that. You could tell we risked a lot going for it because we knew the three points was going to put us in a position to not have a game mid-week the following week.”
The risk -- sending numbers forward, and hoping not to be hit on the counter -- surely paid off in the end. But early in the second half, the plan of attack appeared to take a significant blow when right back Andrew Farrell had his right ankle stepped on by Jermaine Taylor. The injury forced Farrell out of the match, and prompted Heaps to use one of his substitutes earlier than usual.
Kevin Alston filled in for the injured Farrell, but instead of manning the right back spot, he switched sides with left back Darrius Barnes. The idea: add firepower to the part of pitch where Lee Nguyen liked to get the ball before going at goal.
However, Alston wouldn’t be able to spear a potential comeback all by himself. After watching Ricardo Clark dominate the midfield for much of the evening, Heaps looked to Jermaine Jones, who was coming off a trying stretch where he played two full matches in a four-game span.
“I would have liked to not had to use him,” Heaps said. “But it was actually the game calling for him. In the middle, we were getting overrun a little bit. We needed a little bit with Jermaine, and in the end, he changed it.”
With Alston adding speed and tenacity on the left, and Jones using his savvy and instincts to settle down the midfield, the time had come for the Revolution’s most potent weapon to do a number on the Dynamo.
Two minutes after Jones entered, Alston found Nguyen in the box, where he uncorked a curling shot that tucked itself into the upper 90. And with that blast, the match was back on level terms.
The job wasn’t done, of course. With just under half an hour still to go, the Revolution continued their search for the goal that would guarantee they wouldn’t have to worry about a wild-card matchup.
It wouldn’t be easy. The Dynamo, who wanted nothing more than to give outgoing coach Dominic Kinnear a win in his final home game, pressed for the game-winner as well. The stakes for both sides were high, and it showed, as the game opened up wide in the waning moments.
But the defensively-suspect Dynamo left themselves vulnerable in the process. The Revolution took advantage in the 86th minute when Darrius Barnes grabbed a failed clearance from Kofi Sarkodie in front of frame. Barnes could’ve taken the shot, but ushered it instead to Nguyen, who poked it through.
“It was a tight game, so I figured I’d find the goalscorer,” Barnes quipped with the media following the match. “I think if it’s a game where we’re leading, I probably would’ve taken the shot. But I think it was the right play. We always work on making that extra pass. I think it was the right play to make.”
That decision turned out to have a profound effect on the Revolution’s fortunes, as they held on in the final minutes to clinch a top-3 finish.
“It was one of our goals and to come here and get the job done is just big-time and says a lot about this team,” said Barnes. “After we clinched a playoff spot last weekend, it would’ve been easy to kind of take our foot off the gas a little bit, but this team wants to achieve more. Tonight, we showed that.”