Thanks to expansion and an ever-growing number of MLS teams, the start of the season has crept from the beginning of April to early March to Leap Day. Although this means the more northern teams have to concern themselves with freezing temperatures, winter weather travel delays, and snow, besides the actual playing of soccer, this year it also meant that teams got in the first couple games of the season before the country shut down for coronavirus reasons. In Bruce Arena’s first season opener with the Revolution, New England headed north of the border for the #MapleSyrupDerby with Montreal on Leap Day. With last season’s MVP Carles Gil injured, Teal Bunbury scored the Revolution’s first goal of the season, but Montreal answered with two of their own to secure a 2-1 win.
The next week (Saturday, March 7) New England opened their home season at Gillette with a 1-1 draw to Chicago. Adam Buksa, the team’s newest designated player, scored for the Revolution, which was encouraging. Otherwise, they again gave up a lead while looking not terrible, but not great either. And then things got interesting, by which I mean everything was cancelled and the Revolution unknowingly played their last game for four months.
Over the next couple months, the players and staff joined the millions of Americans Staying Home and Social Distancing. They did soccer drills in their backyards, ran outside appropriately distanced, showed off their piano skills, and gave cooking advice, among other activities. As things settled down, they returned to small group, then full team training, and rumors arose about teams returning to play through a tournament, promptly dubbed the Returnament by fans. All the teams would gather in one location and be tested, cutting down on travel and virus spread. The format was finalized and the location chosen – the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida, where they would have accommodations and sports facilities in one place. Great choice, except that in the weeks leading up to the tournament, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Florida were in the process of exploding. But MLS decided not to cancel1, and 24 of 26 teams made it to the Sunshine State without major incident. FC Dallas and Nashville SC, after receiving multiple positive test results, made the decision to drop out, with their group stage games (which count for the regular season standings) hopefully to be played at some future time.
For the rest of the teams, bubble time began, and at 8 pm on Thursday, July 9th, the Revolution restarted their season with a game against their Maple Syrup Derby friends, the Montreal Impact. This time, with Gil playing, and for the first time ever, three designated players (Gil, Buksa, and Gustavo Bou) on the field together, the Revolution looked, dare I say it, good. The finishing was lacking, but the movement and passing looked better than I’ve seen in a while. Ten minutes into the second half, after several missed chances and wayward shots, Bou turned near the edge of the box to pound a shot past the Montreal goalkeeper. And that’s all it took. Well, that, thirty-five minutes of defending, and a last-minute save from Matt Turner. Which the broadcast, streamed on Twitter (seriously, Twitter), cut off. I wish I was kidding. I should have switched to the Spanish stream, but I didn’t want to expend that much energy translating. So I stuck it out on Twitter. Fortunately, because the English announcers were so bad (not maliciously bad, like blatantly insulting one team or players, just bad), I kept the video from Twitter going and borrowed the audio from Brad Feldman and Charlie Davies commentating for the Revolution on the radio, so I heard the final minutes of the game, even if I didn’t see them. The audio was at least ten seconds behind the video, but this was still preferable to “There’s Bruce Arena. He is wearing . . . a shirt. Here is a player. He has . . . kicked the ball.” Like I said, not good. But the Revolution picked up a 1-0 win to start off their Returnament run, so #NERevs Twitter was temporarily happy.
Eight days later, New England took to the field again against D.C. United. Unlike Montreal, who sat back and allowed the Revolution a lot of possession, D.C. pressed more, but the Revolution held up until early in the second half when Buksa headed a deflected shot into the back of the net. Twenty minutes later, New England reminded their fans that they’re still the Revolution by horribly misplaying a back pass to Turner. A D.C. player swooped in to claim the ball and the goal. Final score: 1-1. This broadcast (on ESPN) was better than the previous game. For one thing, they didn’t cut off the final minutes of stoppage time. For another, they used field noise, so we got to hear the players and coaches yelling at each other, instead of fake, generic crowd noise that was inserted twenty minutes into the game and overpowered the commentators (seriously, that happened too).
For their last Group C game, the Revolution played Toronto FC, at nine am on a Tuesday to avoid the worst of the Florida heat and humidity. Arena rotated a good number of his players and was again without Carles Gil, who was out with the same injury as in preseason. But I guess you don’t win five MLS cups and get to coach the US Men’s National Team for eight years without knowing what you’re doing, because the Revolution looked like they were playing some weird sort of Bruce Arena 4D chess. After a lackluster first half with something like no shots on goal and a few saves from Matt Turner, they went into the halftime break tied at zero. One substitution later, New England came out ready to play. Within minutes, they had multiple shots and chances and continued to push for a goal throughout the half. In the end, they had some near misses, and some close calls at the other end, with a couple penalty claims for added excitement, and the game ended in a pretty fair 0-0 draw.
With that, the Revolution got 5 points for the regular season standings and booked their spot in the round of 16. There’s another two and a half weeks of soccer to go before the tournament final, and then who knows? I don’t know if even MLS knows what they’re going to do, based on the resurgent numbers of cases across large portions of the United States. Even though deaths have (so far) seemed to rise only marginally, full ICUs, ambulance rerouting, the threat of crisis care, overworked medical professionals, and cancelled non-emergency procedures are not the signs of a happy and well-functioning health care system. Maybe we’ll have a 5-game 2020 season? Or move the league to Antarctica? Put all the players in inflatable bumper bubble balls to keep them six feet apart? Rebrand the league as Major League Foosball in Real Life where every player is assigned to a spot on the field and can only move a certain distance laterally?
1There’s some backlash about MLS and other sports leagues getting rapid-result testing to play games while everyday citizens are waiting over a week for test results to return to essential jobs. However, the way I see it is that the reason sports teams haven’t been able to get back to playing games is because everyone else won’t get their act together, so they should just go on ahead and use their resources to get players tested. Also, the number of tests being done is a relatively small percentage of the total, and what I’ve heard is that leagues are contracting with private companies for testing.
No comments:
Post a Comment