Revolution at Chivas USA, 4.30.11

This was by a wide margin the sorriest performance of the season so far by the Revolution, a far cry from their promising outing against Kansas City. At about minute 50, I began simply enduring the game, like a midlevel bureaucrat slogging his way from 3:00 to 5:00 the day after a bender. I started pulling for Chivas to score even more goals at that point, since a good old-fashioned shellacking is more intriguing than a 2-0 game that’s never in doubt. Even there I was disappointed—Chivas should have netted at least 2 more goals than they did. (The final was 3-0.)

For Revolution followers the game was notable for two reasons. First, it contained one of the worst defensive sequences I’ve ever seen by players in a professional match. (And they were good players.) In the 57^th minute, Franco Coria lost a challenge and allowed a Chivas player to dribble to the corner and make a cross. Shalrie Joseph, playing near the top of his penalty box amongst a trio of Chivas players, ultimately collected the cross and casually played the ball back to Didier Domi, who, astonished, trapped the ball almost politely with the inside of his foot at the six. The ball rolled to the feet of two equally astonished Chivas players, one of whom (Alejandro Moreno) gratefully put it into the net. After the goal, Domi sat on his duff, looking up and mouthing words to Joseph while gesturing in a European way towards the area just vacated by the celebrating Chivas attackers. The gist of Domi’s comments can be guessed.

The game was also notable for the naked frustration shown by the Revolution players as the game wore on. Gone was the bonhomie on display after the KC victory. In the 74^th minute against Chivas, for example, Benny Feilhaber made a laughable strike that sailed well over the height of the bar and well wide of the post. Cameras showed Rajko Lekic looking visibly upset at the “shot.” Feilhaber in turn looked equally disgusted with his teammates throughout much of the match. After a good performance in his first Revolution game, Feilhaber laid an egg in this one. He was virtually invisible, like the rest of the Revolution players. It’s only one game, obviously, but it went some small way towards justifying Chivas’s decision to pass on Feilhaber in last month’s MLS allocation draft.