FRISCO, Texas - It’s not often that a player sees action in four different positions on the field in under two weeks.
Kellyn Acosta, whose natural position is as defensive midfielder, has just done that. He started in Saturday's 1-1 draw with Columbus Crew SC as an attacking midfielder - the 'Number 10’ role usually reserved for Mauro Diaz, who missed the match as a precaution. Earlier in the week, he started as both a left and right back in the two Olympic qualifying matches the US U-23 National Team played against Colombia, and also saw minutes two weeks ago in his traditional holding midfielder role against Montreal.
“It’s a kind of different feel for me. I’ve never been that far up on the field,” he said. “It’s something I’m not too familiar with. I like to get forward, but it’s hard for me to get into the right spots and find the ball. I kind of tried to mimic Mauro [Diaz], but, I mean, he’s a magician. It’s hard to play his game.”
Kellyn will be happy to know that head coach Oscar Pareja was very happy him in advanced role tonight - not only because he subbed-in for arguably the team’s most creative piece, but also because of the tactical change to match Columbus’ strengths.
“I enjoyed [having to play Kellyn Acosta for Mauro Diaz],” he said with a smirk after the match. “That was a tactical move that I made, I take full responsibility for that one, like any other. But especially that one.”
The decision to start Kellyn in a more advanced role was made was to stop one player: defending midfielder Wil Trapp. The fellow U.S. U-23 Men's National Team member is a player that Columbus traditionally likes to slide in between the center backs to play the ball out of the back.
“What I wanted to [stop] was Trapp and the other midfielder coming out easily [out of the back],” Pareja said. “[I wanted to stop them] when they’re starting the play, when they start building. And we did it a few times. It was Kellyn getting the ball back. So we did not score, but it worked pretty well.”
However, playing the Homegrown midfielder in Diaz’s role was not without its pitfalls.
“I knew that I would have less creativity,” Oscar explained. “Kellyn is not natural in that position. For me Kellyn played a great game in that position not being a playmaker, but being a number ‘5’ [or] ‘8’ who can give me range and could give me aggressiveness there when Columbus was building from the back.
Even with the negatives, for anyone who could see Pareja’s ear-to-ear grin in his post-match press conference, his feelings about tonight's tactical matchup were evident.
“I enjoyed [playing Kellyn as an attacking midfielder] a lot, I thought that was very good,” he said.
