Seriously - the man is a complete joke as a referee. Among his numerous offenses in this match: (1) calling questionable fouls every 30 seconds to ruin the flow of the game early, (2) turning a blind eye to not-so-questionable fouls when they occur in and around the box, (3) then proceeding to give a soft penalty, (4) showing Joseph straight red for an at most, mis-timed tackle that Olsen baited him into, and (5) mysteriously giving a yellow for diving to a player who was knocked off his feet in a fair challenge. WTF! needs to be given an exponential in order to reach my level of confusion and existential distress.
On to the game. DC switched to a 4-4-2, benched Moreno, and came out guns blazing. Finally! There were still a number of poor passes and give-aways, but having four at the back helped to alleviate the penalties DC has been paying for such mistakes in the previous 3 matches. Despite all of this promise, the goals would not come and in the second half, another craptactular defensive miscue allowed the Revs to take the lead.
Fortunately, the aforementioned Vaughn soon gifted DC a PK and then a man advantage. Unfortunately, DC could not press on for all three points. Still, it's a point on the board against a tough team that was packing it in defensively and this result should halt the slide. A severe punishing of Chivas on Sunday should get United's season back on track.
Optimist me says that DC looked more solid at the back, Fred was very impressive for the first half, and the passion was back. Pessimist me says that Jaime and Gomez were simply shadows of their former selves, the former did absolutely nothing besides put in the PK, and the ref gifted us this point. Realist me says we need more width, Gomez should ride the pine while Fred gets the keys Sunday, and we absolutely need more depth at the back.
So, in conclusion, tonight's result was a positive. A tiny, tiny, ridiculously small, maybe even down to the molecular level, positive, but enough to keep us treading water and getting closer to land. Three points on Sunday against Goats Jr. should get the machine humming. We just need to get all the parts to gel by summer for the SuperLiga and to make the late season run into the playoffs.
And finally, a metric assload of bile heaped upon those jokers at ESPN. Little 10-yard graphic on free-kicks - good. Showing the game in it's entirety and not joining in progress - good, though taping the game left me with the last 10 minutes missing (you'd think I'd have learned by now with ESPN). Focusing on players, coaches, sideline reporters, crappy Heaps playing crappy basketball for crappy Duke, et al, while the game is in progress - UNFORGIVABLE! Once or twice is pardonable, but I lost track around a dozen or so. And that crew in the box? Awful does not begin to describe that steaming pile of yak dung. Will someone please red-card Wynalda. Please?
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