Sunday, April 11, 2010

Hat trick leads Revs to win 4-1

New England Revolution had their home opener for the 2010 MLS season Saturday night. A cool breeze with temps in the low 50's made for good conditions to play on the new Astroturf field.


Rookie Jack Schilawski scored three times in the span of fourteen minutes in the second half to power the Revs to the win. Sainey Nyassi's hustle bought him a goal on a bad back pass to provide the final score 4-1.

Dwayne DeRosario, a long time Rev's nemesis, scored in the first half to give Toronto FC the lead at the half 1-0. Except for the slight lapse to allow that goal, he was really held in check all night. He started coming down the right side challenging rookie defender Seth Sinovic. Seth met his every challenge hustling to frustrate Dwayne. In the second half Dwayne switched sides to try and come down the left and had no more success against Kevin Alston. Cory Gibbs and Emmauel Osei held the fort in the central defense and parried everything Toronto had.

The Revolution offense played short smart passes getting into the triangle game, moving after the pass in to the space provided. Such movements and short passes created the opportunities for Schilawski to clinically finish two crosses from Kelli Dube. Schilawski pressed Nick Garcia into a give-away which he then took into the goalie one-on-one to bury it nicely into the net. What a start at home for the rookie to get a hat trick!

Overall, the Revolution played well. Keeping the ball down on the ground, playing smart short, triangular passes was the route to create goals. In the first half, they played more in the air and I am sorry but that has not worked for the Revs. Pressure defense created some of the opportunities and they were able to convert them. Al good signs for this year.

Darius Barnes will have trouble breaking into the back four with these guys playing as well as they have, The super sub from last week, Kenny Mansally didn't even get off the bench today. He scored two goals against DC United and sat this one out. When the remainder of the squad heal and get ready to play (Reis, Twellman, Jankauskas, Castro) the depth choices will be good ones (tough ones) to make. We'll need those options as the season progresses with the US Open Cup and SuperLiga to add to the normal schedule.

On a related note, what's with the new MLSsoccer.com site?
No RSS feed enabled? Poor contrast between text and background? It is heavily video focused and wasting a ton of space on each page layout. Doesn't seem to me that they spent much time on any usability testing! You really have to go digging to find anything of importance on the site.