Jon Bell gives himself a C+ after first MLS goal

Usually when a player scores the first goal of their career they are on cloud nine. While Jon Bell was definitely excited to score his first MLS goal on Saturday night, he also realized that he has more work to do.

Bell’s 78th minute header looked like it was going to be the game winner. It was a great play by the defender who became the first Revs II player to score in a first-team match.

It appears that Bell will be a menace in the air. He has impressive hops and almost headed home his first goal back against the New York Red Bulls prior to the international break.

After the game, Bell talked about how it felt to slot home the first goal of his MLS career.

The 23-year-old said, “I didn’t even know what to do after I scored. I was just in shock and I just started running, basically. I didn’t even know what I was going after. Really happy to get my first professional goal, but most importantly we got the three points. It was a really rough second half, but we were able to pull through and get three points on the road.”

But when you look at the match as a whole there were definitely some times were Bell struggled. His positioning was questionable in certain moments and on certain plays he left Andrew Farrell out to dry. The most glaring one being the build up on the play that ended with NYCFC getting a penalty kick.

It’s hard to pinpoint the two goals that New York scored on any defender specifically because it was a total defensive breakdown but even Bell admitted that he needed to be better.

When asked about his performance, Bell said that he would give himself a C+.

The center back would continue saying, “I’m a defender first and it’s to defend goals, and we didn’t do our job. We conceded early in the second half and then we conceded in the last 10 minutes of the game, and for us that’s unacceptable. But that’s football. It happens. There’s going to be times like these where it’s going to be an intense away game and you might concede late in the game, and you might have to battle to get out of it, get out the mud. For myself, I think overall I did all right, but still a little bit disappointed we conceded two goals. And when we conceded the two goals, too, just at that time in the game.”

With that type of attitude, Bell will find success in MLS. If he continues to improve defensively and slot home a few goals, Bruce Arena along with Revolution fans will be giving him a much higher grade than the one Bell give himself after the win over New York.