Revolution at Houston Dynamo, 9.29.12: The Present Absent

 

New England’s 2-0 loss to the Houston Dynamo last night transported me back to, of all places, my days as an English literature graduate student in the early 1990s. One of the catch phrases in the academy at that time—along with “the feminine grotesque” and “Bakhtin’s notion of the carnival” (always pronounced “car-nee-VAHL”)—was “the absent present.” I believe the concept sprang, like so many other trendy literary critical concepts, from the pen of Martin Heidegger, and no doubt had something to do with the impossibility of defining words and how absent meanings were really present in them.

Here’s how an English grad student back then might have written about, or generated words using the subject of, the game: Four New England midfielders were present on the field last night, but their presence was felt as an absence. The players were a kind of radical opposite to Hamlet’s dead father, whose ghostly absence invests meaning into every line of the tragedy. The Revolution midfielders’ collective presence was a ghostly negation of all that is effectual on the soccer field, a sort of present absent, endlessly deferring our notion of what it means to control the middle third, if not our understanding of the very meaning of the word midfielder.

The translation: the Revolution midfield—last night consisting of starters Benny Feilhaber, Kelyn Rowe, Clyde Simms, and Fernando Cardenas, and halftime substitute Juan Toja (who came on for Simms)—didn’t show up. Probably the most damning statistic other than the score is that Houston—not exactly FC Barcelona even by MLS standards—held the ball 65% of the game.

The Revolution backline of A.J. Soares and Stephen McCarthy in the middle and Darrius Barnes and Kevin Alston on the outsides, did what they could, coming out of halftime with a clean sheet. But by the 70^th minute or so they were spent, and understandable breakdowns began to accumulate. In the 73^rd minute, Will Bruin got behind Soares and only a good save by Bobby Shuttleworth kept Houston off the board. It was just a matter of time, though, and Houston got the game-winner in the 77^th minute when Ricardo Clark deflected a Brad Davis cross off the far post and in. After going up, Houston continued to press and added another deserved goal in stoppage time.

I should add that one Revs’ midfielder—Toja—did in fact impose his presence on this game, though unfortunately it wasn’t because of his good play. (In fact, Toja’s unforced giveaway to Davis in the 58^th minute, after which Toja simply stood in place and made no effort to right his wrong by pressuring the ball, represented a low point for the Revolution in the loss.) No, Toja imposed himself on the game by his occasionally reckless play, including at least a couple of skirmishes with the equally combative Adam Moffat, one of which led to a yellow for Toja. I’m no great fan of Moffat’s, but I thought Toja’s aerial challenge that led to the yellow was bush league. Toja easily could have been sent off after a hard tackle in the 80^th minute, but the referee didn’t have the heart.

Enough. Three more games left for the Revolution this season, and then, mercifully, we’re done.