Revolution v. Philadelphia Union, 7.17.11

In order to delay the unpleasant task of dilating upon the Revolution’s 3-0 home loss to the Philadelphia Union, I’ll first address some recent changes to New England’s roster. As I discussed in an earlier post, fellow Serbians Ilija Stolica and Marko Perovic—two skilled and likeable veterans—were quietly and, it seems, rather coldly let go by the Revolution a few weeks ago. And now, two more skilled European vets are gone: Didier Domi was released and Ousmane Dabo retired.

New England no doubt brought in Domi and Dabo this season to add skill, experience, and leadership to an unsettled roster that includes such young players as A. J. Soares, Kevin Alston, Sainey Nyassi, Zak Boggs, and Zack Schilawski. Management’s reasoning must have been that these old French vets—along with established Revs’ veterans Perovic, Shalrie Joseph, and Matt Reis—might just help propel the young team into MLS’s large playoff pool. And from there, who knows?

But Domi and, in particular, Dabo have been unavailable due to injuries and never got a chance to mesh with the team. Since they are too old and injury-prone to be in any club’s long-term plans—and since Lio Messi himself couldn’t save this season’s bottom-of-the-standings and still-sinking Revolution squad—Domi was cut and the Revs’ front office must have been only too happy to tear up Dabo’s contract and throw him a retirement party. The release of Perovic—who was last season’s team MVP and is only 27—still perplexes me, but fans of the Patriots will know that Bob Kraft’s organizations are ruthless when evaluating veterans, no matter what their previous levels of service.

As a fan of the game, I’ll miss all four of New England’s recently departed players, no matter how seldom they were on the field this year. Each possessed soccer talent and knowledge that the Revolution could dearly use. Dabo in particular was a joy to watch, and his extremely limited time playing might define the word “tantalizing” for New England fans. I imagine that each of these players (with the possible exception of Dabo, who retired) was told by management that the team is “moving in a different direction,” which of course is an old euphemism for “our initial plan didn’t work out so we’re kicking you to the curb.”

There’s no telling how these releases have affected team morale, but judging by the Revs’ flat and lifeless performance against Philadelphia, my guess is that the effect hasn’t been a positive one. New England extended its winless streak to nine games—eleven if you care to count the friendly against Manchester United and the U.S. Open Cup play-in game against Sporting KC—and did it with a certain flair for the undramatic. In this match, the Revolution actually failed to get a single shot on target. They’ve outdone even themselves.

The loss was hardly unexpected. You may recall that the Revolution’s last regular-season match came against Real Salt Lake way back on July 4. A recent Boston Globe article misrepresented that pitiful performance by the Revolution as “spirited.” Honestly, what game did the Globe reporter watch? The Revolution were pathetic against Salt Lake and they were predictably pathetic against Philadelphia. Only this time around, the Revs didn’t get the benefit of unjustly playing with a man advantage for over an hour, nor did they convert any fluke set-piece goals, as they did in Salt Lake.

To move on: Shalrie Joseph once again proved his importance to the Revolution, this time by missing the game due to an accumulation of yellow cards. Without him on the field, his teammates muddled through the first half as if they’d just awakened from a yearlong nap. Philadelphia promptly scored two goals—one in the run of play, one off a free kick—that looked so similar I almost thought the second was a replay of the first. Suffice it to say that each goal came off a cross to the far post that was headed back to a comically wide-open Union player who volleyed home the shot. The goals were impressive in a training-ground kind of way, but the Revolution’s poor defensive marking necessarily diminished their impressiveness.

Veteran Carlos Ruiz was the man of this match, setting up and scoring the game-winning goal, generally being a pest up top, and baiting Benny Feilhaber into a second yellow card in the 66^th minute. Feilhaber’s frustration was again evident, and his second yellow was a dumb foul that really hurt his team. The Revs had actually managed to regroup at halftime—changing to a 3-5-2 formation—and for the first twenty minutes or so they played with a passion that was so lacking from the first half. I hate to say it because I like Feilhaber and I’m glad he’s on the team, but his reaction to his second yellow was embarrassing and borderline shameful. His desire to win and his frustration during this winless streak are obvious, but shouting at and pushing opposing players after your own stupid foul only makes you look like a petulant schoolboy about to pick up his ball and go home.

Surprisingly, some Boston-area fans did have something to cheer about in this one. Union rookie Sheanon Williams, who grew up in Boston and went to high school in Weston, played well on defense and sent his family and friends home happy with an icing-on-the-cake toe-poke goal in the final minute of stoppage time. He’d been making frequent runs forward in an attempt to get that goal, and he deserved it.

Need I add that the Revolution yet again lost the possession battle? You might attribute the Revolution’s 44% time-of-possession number to their having played a man down for much of the second half, but you’d be mistaken. When playing at full strength in the first half, the Revolution managed to hold the ball only 37% of the time.