Seems like I've been to ten trillion sporting events since I've been home, especially at Gillette stadium. Today's was a doozy, as a heated game between the Revs and United ended in a 2-1 victory, but only after a questionable penalty kick goal for the Revolution in the 90th minute.
The game started pretty slow, with DC showing a slight advantage but a lot of heading and few chances. Eventually Revolution Matt Reis made an incredible save on a diving header in front, and the crowd went nuts. However, several minutes later Fred (that's his whole name, how cool is that) put in a beautiful goal of a sweet gimme pass from Luciano Emilio Estevez (who my brother thought looked like Ronnie Turiaf, but only thanks to the braids he now sports.
Anyways, 1-0 DC at half even after Taylor Twellman (who had been injured lately) enters and the crowd goes wild. After half however, Chris Tierney (who is terrible) was taken out for Kenny Mansally (an unfortunate name but an okay player) . Mansally made an almost immediate impact, as very quickly into the new half he made a sweet cross that Shalrie Joseph (pictured above) headed in for the tying goal.
So that was awesome, the crowd erupted. Then there were a lot of penalties back and forth and few good chances. A few times it seemed like the Revs should have gotten a penalty kick on bad fouls by DC. However, the ref (who was so huge and the kids behind us kept saying must be on steroids) kept making terrible calls (like giving a card for a tackle in the box but no penalty, or calling the game over when the ball was nowhere near midfield and confusing the entire DC team) and so he didn't give the Revs any penalties.
Until the 87th minute that is. On a nonfoul. So that's awkward.
Steve Ralston nailed it home, the Revs were up in the 90th minute, and they held on for all of injury time to pull out the win. Ra ra siss boom bah, yay Revs!
Final Thoughts:
Best Hawker Ever: Same guy from the NCAA Lax Tourney (it is after all the same stadium). His beauty tonight? He signed this weird guy's shirt after the guy asked him to, and then peddled his diet pepsi with this gem: "Diet Pepsi will add ten years to your life. That's vitality that even viagra can't do. Unbelievable."
Worst fans of the Night: Those kids from Framingham who sat near us. One claimed his high school team could take the Revolution because "they make a lot of dumb mistakes" and then later claimed that soccer was rigged. They were sort of annoying when they called the refs zebras (soccer reds wear yellow and no stripes so it doesn't really work) and kept talking about smoking blunts, but it got real bad when some crazy guy sat near us and they just kept antagonizing him and it got reaaal awkward for the families around us. No question the guy was nuts, but these kids were douches, and I'd really like to see them take on the Revs now to see them get destroyed. Guess I can dream.
Best fans of the Night: The kids next to us. One of them said "I think the refs afraid of yellow," which was adorable.
Man of the Match: Kevin Alston (Ok, not really, but no one was particuarly awesome, and just look at Alston's picture). Plus he shares a last name with Skip to my Lou and Corey Alston, so that's ill.
MLS Soccer 5/30/09: Revolution 2, DC United 1
