Revolution v. Toronto FC, 6.15.11

This is getting serious. The Revolution couldn’t do better than a 0-0 draw at home against a Toronto team that has won only two games this year. To say that the game was “at home” deserves some qualification, as the official attendance was a meager 6,680 and the stands looked as if they held considerably fewer customers than that. Game 7 of the Bruins/Canucks NHL final was being played concurrently, meaning that only the true Revolution faithful (or the deranged) were on hand for the soccer game.

A bit of a coincidence that two Boston sports teams were playing two Canada-based teams at the same time. Presumably the result of the soccer match did not excite the kind of rioting in Toronto that we saw in Vancouver. In fact, Vancouver authorities might have done well to show a replay of the Toronto v. Revolution game on big screens throughout the city to stupefy their rowdy populace. The game was that lame (apart from some excitement in and around stoppage time). By far the lustiest cheers of the night at Gillette—for the record, occurring at minutes 36, 72, and 83—were due to the Bruins scoring goals, not to actions seen on the soccer field.

But enough. As predicted, New England finally abandoned its 4-5-1 formation and started Kenny Mansally up front with Rajko Lekic. Obviously, Lekic managed to avoid finding the net yet again, but Nichol keeps staying with him. I’m still not sure if I like the guy or not myself. He seems to play hard, though he gets called offside a lot, complains to refs incessantly, and sometimes pulls up on his runs when sprinting for through balls. Worse than all that, he continues to occasionally bark at his teammates, as he did in the 71^st minute of this game after a cross from Mansally failed to find his right foot. Mansally did very well to get the cross off, as there was a defender draped all over him and the cross wouldn’t have occurred at all if not for Mansally’s hustle. Lekic’s pissy reaction reminded me strongly of certain NFL receivers who bark at their quarterbacks for not delivering perfect passes, never mind the 350-pound defensive tackles in the QBs’ faces. Still, it must be said that Lekic has a strong personality and an attitude, and those are no bad things for a striker to have. There must be some reason I’m drawn to him.

Don’t expect any such petulant outbursts from the Revolution’s Kevin Alston, who quietly leads the team in minutes played this season and who had a characteristically good game tonight, including a great run down the right side in the 58^th minute. After receiving a pass from Sainey Nyassi—who came on in the second half for Zak Boggs—Alston found himself trapped in front of the corner flag. He still somehow managed to juke the defender, dart a few yards up the end line, and deliver a dangerous cross to Lekic, who one-timed the ball wide of the post. Alston made a few more nice runs into the offensive third over the course of the game and broke up many Toronto offensive build-ups before they had a chance to really get going. He’s fast and reliable. The only egregious play I can recall him making came in the first minute of last year’s MLS all-star game, when he slowly played the ball back to his central defender. Man. U’s Federico Macheda intercepted the pass and buried the shot to get the rout going early.

I’m tempted to say that Nyassi and Mansally also had good games, and they did have their moments, but there’s no way around the fact that the Revolution failed to score and failed to create the kinds of opportunities that they did last week in New York. I thought that after losing their last four regular-season matches by one goal apiece, and after playing particularly well in New York, that the team was due to explode, or at least to beat Toronto 2-0. But that notion was just another example of the triumph of hope over experience.

Two final notes: The Revolution’s talented but glass-like Frenchmen—Ousmane Dabo and Didier Domi—were once again out due to injury. Also, it might be worth keeping an eye on Toronto’s Belgian defender Mikael Yourassowsky, not because of the quality of his play but because of the quality of his acting. In the 63^rd minute, Pat Phelan stepped on his heal from behind and received a yellow. Yourassowsky rolled around on the ground as if something were really wrong with him, prompting Revs’ play-by-play man Brad Feldman, normally a keen judge, to say something along the lines of, “He’s not faking it, this is serious.” I agreed—it looked bad. Phelan and Shalrie Joseph, however, felt that Yourassowsky was malingering and they gave him an earful. Yourassowsky had to leave the field, of course, but within seconds he was trotting back on without so much as a limp, validating the judgment of Phelan and Joseph and making the rest of us feel like dupes. Ten minutes later, A. J. Soares made a nice slide tackle on Yourassowsky and the latter went into his act again. No one was having any of it this time, however, including the ref, who booked him.