Scoring outburst crucial as Revs hope to progress in CCL

When the New England Revolution were up 1-0 to start the second half, it almost felt like they were losing. In Concacaf Champions League, scoring at home is the name of the game and that’s why the next two Revolution goals were so important.

A mostly inexperienced CCL team will head to Mexico to play Pumas night week for the second leg of the quarterfinals. With it being a difficult atmosphere, New England needed to find the back of the net multiple times on Wednesday night.

While the Revs were able to get a goal in the 19th minute, it took until the 72nd minute for Adam Buksa to score his first goal of the game. It definitely wasn’t due to a lack of chances.

New England heavily outshot Pumas (18-8) and doubled their shots on target (6-3). Buksa could have had a hat trick possibly and Gustavo Bou nearly bagged himself a goal on multiple occasions as well.

Head Coach Bruce Arena said that scoring three goals was very important for his team.

“This is a 180-minute game, basically, and away goals count,” said Arena. “I think Concacaf is about a year behind the rest of the world with this stuff. So, away goals count in this competition. So, it was important to score goals, as well as not concede any, so we can go to Mexico City with a little bit of a cushion, but it’s not going to be easy.”

“And then the third goal at the end of the game was huge, because I think 2-0 is really inviting for this team next Wednesday, not that they’re not going to be ready to make up this goal difference, but I think the third goal was huge,” Arena added.

Captain Carles Gil also thought that the was vital for New England.

“In an elimination round we know that goals are important,” he said. “Getting the clean sheet was important too. We know that if we score a goal there we have many options to advance. We’re very happy. We deserved this because we created many chances. They had a couple good ones too. Now we’ll focus on Saturday’s game and then we’ll travel to Mexico.”

New England still needs to put in a good performance down in Mexico. If the club takes their foot off the gas pedal, Pumas has the potential to have a scoring outburst at home.

But the Revs started their 2022 CCL journey with a bang, they just need to finish the job in the second leg if they want to advance to the Semi-Finals.