COMMERCE CITY, Colo. – A scream captured the emotion of Juan Agudelo’s first goal in 11 months.
“My celebration, I screamed; I was like, ‘YES,’” Agudelo said after he scored the opening goal in the New England Revolution’s 2-0 win over the Colorado Rapids on Saturday night. “It felt good because I knew how much it meant to the team and how important it is to get an early away goal.”
Agudelo had last scored a competitive goal while playing for FC Utrecht in the Dutch Eredivisie on May 3, 2014, but his 18th-minute strike at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park was almost worth the wait.
Fresh off last weekend’s two-goal performance against the San Jose Earthquakes, Kelyn Rowe pinged a cross-field pass to Agudelo, who used his first touch to deftly bring the ball out of the air and his second to chip a shot over Rapids goalkeeper Clint Irwin, kissing it off the crossbar before it crossed the line.
“I saw Kelyn pick his head up and he’s a player that has a great foot on him,” said Agudelo. “He was able to play a good long ball and I was able to take it down and chip it over the keeper. I’m just glad I was able to help my team out because it’s a tough place to play with the altitude.”
“It was a good run from Agudelo,” Rowe said. “He’s one of those players, you want to get him the ball when he’s in those positions. He’s got a great touch out of the air – you’ve seen it many times when he was here before and you saw it again today. Credit him with a great finish.”
Credit must also go to Jay Heaps and the coaching staff for a clever tactical plan which paid direct dividends with Agudelo’s opener. Agudelo started the match on the right wing and Rowe on the left, but the duo was switched just minutes before they combined to unlock the Rapids.
It was a change which was planned from the outset.
“We like to switch them once in a while,” Heaps said. “We felt the matchup of Kelyn on the right and Juan (on the left) was going to be a little bit better as the game went on, so we started the opposite so that as the game went on we would switch them.
“It was a couple minutes after we made the switch that Kelyn served a perfect ball, and Juan, the touch was excellent.”
The goal was reminiscent of Agudelo’s audacious back-heel lob which was a finalist for MLS Goal of the Year during his previous stint in New England in 2013, complete with a brief question as to whether the ball crossed the line after it kissed off the crossbar.
Officially Agudelo was ruled to have scored on the initial shot, but he left little doubt as to whether it had crossed the line at all when he followed up and buried it into the back of the net.
“It was already across the line, but I didn’t want to take my chances with the official saying that it was not across the line,” Agudelo said with a smile. “I made sure I banged it in.”
Agudelo’s goal was a critical strike which – along with Lee Nguyen’s second-half penalty kick and a series of stellar saves from Bobby Shuttleworth – helped the Revs extend their unbeaten run to three games. Which will make it all the more enjoyable when the goal shows up on highlight reels in the coming days.
“He’s just a great player and he makes some amazing plays,” Rowe said of Agudelo. “It’s not going to be his last one.”
