Revolution at Columbus Crew, 8.25.12

The New England Revolution lost 4-3 to the Columbus Crew tonight in Ohio. The Revs have now lost five straight games and are winless in their last eight. Their next game is at home on Wednesday night against Chivas USA, Shalrie Joseph’s new club. I can’t imagine the Revolution will draw more than about 9,000 fans for that one. I also can’t imagine more than about 20 neutral soccer fans worldwide sitting through the match. That’s a shame, because New England fans didn’t get a chance to give Joseph a proper sendoff before he was sent packing to the west coast.

But let’s return, however reluctantly, to tonight’s game against Columbus. If there’s a team in pro sports right now with a weaker killer instinct than these Revs, I don’t want to know about them. The Revolution went up 2-0 in this game and scored three goals total, but managed to squander just as many easy chances, allowing Columbus to stay in the game and eventually win it.

In the 10^th minute, Benny Feilhaber played a perfect cross to Ryan Guy, who couldn’t get his uncontested header on frame from about six yards out. (It must be observed that Guy atoned for this error less than ten minutes later with a killer strike from the top of the box to score the first goal of the game.) Immediately after Columbus’s first goal—one of two excellent dead-ball strikes by newly acquired Crew Designated Player Federico Higuain—the Revs squandered another chance, this time when Kelyn Rowe got behind a slumbering Crew defense and sent a ball across the goal to a wide-open Guy, who couldn’t get a foot on it. Just four minutes after that missed opportunity, Saer Sene played a good through ball to Guy, who beat the defense and had all the time and space he needed to put a shot on goal or pass to Rowe at the far post, but instead sent a low shot wide of the far post.

Despite New England’s missed chances, the Crew showed better quality and deserved the three points. Higuain had a brace and so did Costa Rican striker Jairo Arrieta. All four of the Columbus goals are worth checking out, as is Guy’s aforementioned strike, so I’ll include the highlights at the end of this post.

Regrettably, the Revolution backline was again shredded on a couple of critical occasions. No one could blame them, or Matt Reis, for Higuain’s world-class free-kick strikes (other than blaming them for the fouls that led to those free kicks), but Arrieta found a seam between A.J. Soares and Stephen McCarthy on his game winner, getting behind New England’s center backs easily and beating them badly. Arrieta found that same seam just a couple of minutes later, in the 88^th minute, but on that occasion his shot missed the target.

All of which is to reiterate that this New England loss was no fluke, and thank God there were no borderline controversial calls for anyone to whine about or invoke as tiresome excuses. With twenty-five games played and nine to go, and with the Revolution sitting on only twenty-three points, the rest of New England’s season is strictly for the diehards.