FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - The Kansas City Wizards left Gillette Stadium on Saturday night with a 4-3 come-from-behind victory against the New England Revolution by exploiting pace, space, and guile.
It was the pace of striker Eddie Johnson that unlocked the Revolution defense three times. Johnson scored in the 26th, 38th, and 82nd minutes to give his team the victory and could have had another goal in the 64th minute if not for the intervention of Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis.
Johnson's pace helped Kansas City climb back from a daunting two-goal hole after Steve Ralston and Taylor Twellman scored within the first 23 minutes.
"To our guys' credit, they did a great job to get back into it," Kansas City head coach Curt Onalfo said. "We got the first one back, and then we got the second one."
The first goal came from the speed of Davy Arnaud as Sasha Victorine played a ball through the Revolution defense to Arnaud's run. He calmly slotted past Reis to get Kansas City on the board.
Johnson broke through the defense twice before halftime by using the space created on the field by his pace and the tutelage of Onalfo in trying to exploit those spaces in the Revolution's 3-5-2 formation during training this week.
"We knew there was going to be a lot of space out wide," Johnson said. "We talked all week about where those spaces were and how we could use them. Curt's done a great job of finding those spaces on the field."
Onalfo said that the space was a matter of pushing the line up the field to allow to the ball to play into space.
"We did well tactically against the 3-5-2," Onalfo said. "We were winning the ball farther up the field and that allowed us to exploit the space on the wings."
That space was exploited in the late stages by the guile of second-half substitute Carlos Marinelli. The attacking midfielder entered for Ryan Pore in the 61st minute and increased the service for Johnson.
It was Marinelli who created the game-winner for Johnson. The Argentinean claimed the ball in midfield and curled his through ball behind the Revolution defense and onto the run of Johnson, who dribbled around Reis and rolled the ball into the net.
"It was a great ball from Carlos," Johnson said of the winning goal. "He's one of the best midfield players I've ever played with."
Onalfo thought Marinelli used his experience to control the tempo in the late stages of the contest.
"Carlos helped us tonight," Onalfo said. "We have a lot of young players, and he came in and settled things down. It's just beautiful to watch him play. He's the kind of player the league needs."
Kyle McCarthy is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
