The New England Revolution won against the RedBulls 1-0, but it was an ugly win.
It’s been a rough first month for the New England Revolution. In their first four matches of this season, they’ve only managed three ties and a loss. Worse yet, they’ve been shutout twice in their first four games, and back to back weeks with a player sent off. Too early to hit the panic button, but a good display and a good result against their bigger rivals Redbulls was much needed. Even though their form wasn’t good and their offense struggled to get quality scoring chances, a win is a win and they’ll take it any way.
“The first one (win) is always the hardest, I’ve said that for a while now, because you go on the road, we talk about trying to get points on the road and trying to do well when at home” Jay Heaps post game on first win of the season
This game was also the first Revs game that Marc Geiger worked since the infamous Jermaine Jones incident last October, against DC United, missing what should of been a penalty kick against DC right at the end of the match, when Jermaine made physical contact with Marc, resulting in his sending off and a 6 game suspension. He would once again be the center of attention, twice. Once on a red card he showed to Felipe for a hard foul on Kelyn Rowe, which Redbulls manager Jesse Marsch disagreed with, and whether or not he should of blown dead play when Kemar Lawrence went down during a sequence of plays leading up to the lone goal.
To me, I think you do play until the whistle at the position, that far into the attacking 1/3 of the field, and I think it is shameful for Jesse Marsch to call out the whole Revs team the way he did:
“It’s shameful for me, the game is suppose to be about honor. They can claim they didn’t see him, they can claim they weren’t sure if he was hurt, but it was clear as day that he was down on the ground. And it wasn’t just one player who saw him, their whole team saw him. So that part for me is shameful. And the other part for me is that the referee has such a huge impact on this game by having a bad game.” NYRB Jesse Marsch post game
As Juan would explain later
“I feel like once the ball is kicked to me, I cant just it out of bounds, because then everyone would look at me, its a tough situation, so I looked down, and crossed the ball.”
“it was just instinct once I get the ball, I just kept looking at the ball, look down, then I saw Diego and crossed it.”
As for the game itself, the first half was a bit slow. With only three good scoring chances, two by the Revs, both shots just wide, and a shot on target by the Redbulls which forced Revs keeper Bobby Shuttleworth to make a good diving save. The second half provided a bit more action. New England were able to get two shots on target, with Teal heading in his chance which forced Rebulls keeper Luis Robles to make a good diving save. In the 55th minute is when New England scored the only goal of the match. After the goal, the game got more physical between these two rivals, especially after Felipe was red carded, reducing NYRB to ten men with 29 minutes to go, another decision that was thought he got wrong.