Revolution at Sporting Kansas City, 7.30.11 (A Game for Albert Haynesworth to Watch)

The Revolution’s recent strong showings against D.C. United and the Colorado Rapids carried over into the first half of this game, which ended with New England ahead 1-0 and (shockingly given their recent statistics in this area) virtually even with Kansas City in terms of time of possession. The Revolution showed good form early on, including a nifty give-and-go between Rajko Lekic and Shalrie Joseph in the 9^th minute that led to a scorching attempt by Joseph. Thirty minutes later, Lekic took advantage of a Kansas City defensive miscue to give New England the advantage. He ran onto a long clearance from Matt Reis that skipped over the head of Kansas City’s Matt Besler. Lekic positioned his body perfectly between the ball and the beaten defender and then used the outside of his right foot to bury the shot far post. He celebrated by running to the sideline and making a sweeping motion with his hand, as if indicating the exquisiteness of his craftsmanship. Given the quality of the goal, the gesture wasn’t overdone.

In the second half, things fell apart for the Revs, and Sporting KC dominated the run of play. Kansas City held the ball 65% of the time over the course of the entire match, remarkable given that they held the ball a modest 51% of the time in the first half. But despite their second-half dominance, it seemed for much of the night as if Sporting KC were destined to lose. They failed to finish time and again, a pattern set early in the second half when ex-Revolution defender Seth Sinovic biffed a wide-open shot over the crossbar. But Kansas City persisted, throwing everything they could at the Revolution in an attempt to equalize. They showed the depth of their roster by subbing in Omar Bravo in the 56^th minute, Teal Bunbury in the 80^th, and Birahim Diop in the 88^th.

Bravo, Bunbury, and teammates Kei Kamara, C. J. Sapong, and Jeferson all looked impressive in the second half, but it wasn’t until the 89^th minute that Kansas City actually managed to score. Bunbury got the goal, which was fitting given that it came on Teal Bunbury bobble-head-doll night at LIVESTRONG [sic] Sporting Park. It was a garbage goal, a rebound that fell to Bunbury’s feet at the six. After putting the ball into the net, Bunbury ran to the flag, smacked his head with his palm, and bobbled his head around for the fans—a man imitating a doll that represented the man. The semiotics majors in the crowd must have loved it, but for Revolution fans it was painful to watch, particularly knowing the Revolution had just let two crucial points slip away. If the Revs don’t make the playoffs—and the standings indicate that they probably won’t—they may look back on Bunbury’s goal as the season’s death knell.

There were other painful moments for Revolution fans over the course of the game. Benny Feilhaber had two inexcusably bad giveaways in the 6^th and 12^th minutes and then wasted a corner kick in the 30^th minute when he lofted the ball into the top of the net, as if performing a parlor trick. Zack Schilawski extinguished a nice Revolution build-up in the 7^th minute by needlessly sailing a one-time pass from the wing to no one, and then in the 51^st minute he lost the ball off a wretched touch. Schilawski’s lack of skill on the ball against Sporting KC was apparently contagious, as his replacement Sainey Nyassi (who came on in the 72^nd minute) simply and rather pathetically gave the ball away on two separate occasions while trying to run at and juke defenders, once in the 75^th minute and then again in stoppage time.

But that’s nitpicking. With the recent departures of Marko Perovic, Ilija Stolica, Didier Domi, and Ousmane Dabo, the Revolution’s current roster has all the depth of a baby-pool. Against Kansas City, the roster situation started bad and got progressively worse. First, the Revs had to play without the versatile Chris Tierney due to a red card in the previous match. Second, Stephen McCarthy had to leave the game in the 34^th minute due to a shoulder injury incurred while getting fouled. Third, iron-man Kevin Alston had to come off in the 74^th minute due to a re-aggravated turf-toe injury. Fourth, A. J. Soares was given a straight red card in the 82^nd minute for tackling Sapong from behind just outside the box. At that point, the Revs were basically operating with only two true defenders—Franco Coria in the center and Darrius Barnes on the left.

The Revolution limped through the game’s conclusion using new midfielder Ryan Guy in Alston’s right back spot, moved Barnes inside to play alongside Coria, and dropped winger Kenny Mansally back into Barnes’s spot. Given the circumstances, Steve Nicol had little choice but to make these moves. But given the importance of the match and the minimal time left on the clock when Soares was carded, I would have liked to have seen Joseph—the Revolution’s best player in the air and best at winning fifty-fifty balls—take Soares’s center-back position, leaving Barnes on the outside. That point’s academic, though. After Soares left the game, you could just sense Kansas City was going to equalize.

Alston’s performance against Kansas City merits special mention. He came into the game with an injured toe, and in the 13^th minute Sapong stepped on that toe very hard. Though in obvious pain, Alston stayed with the play, won back the ball, and remained in the match for as long as he could physically stand to do so, almost until the end.

New England Revolution and Patriots owner Robert Kraft might do well to show his shiny new Patriot acquisition Albert Haynesworth a video of Alston’s gritty effort as an example of a particularly dedicated and hard-working member of the Kraft Group in action. Kraft might also inform Haynesworth that Alston’s base salary is a modest $100,000. Kraft might have to explain—perhaps with the use of simple diagrams—that Alston gets paid $100,000 per season, not per play. American football fans will remember that Haynesworth fleeced his previous employers—the Washington Redskins—when he signed a $100 million contract in 2009, then proceeded to record a grand total of 43 tackles in his two sorry years in Washington. (Incidentally, Alston grew up in D.C., and his uncle Mitchell Johnson played for the Redskins. I wouldn’t expect Kraft to go into all that.)

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.