This Revs team at 54 mins. is truly sad ~ inept. After that save and restart, it appears to me that Petro is seroiusly bullshit at the Revs clown show tonight… At last! Beautiful shot and goal! Please, sir, more, sir!
Well darn. The good: Great goal from Esmir, great contributions from Tico, and plenty of fight in those last 20 mins. The bad: -The way we set up. I understand the decision to try to keep control of the game with the 4 possession-oriented midfielders, but man...until that triple sub, we just didn't have anyone on the field with any inclination to "try sh**." Nacho Gil, Tico, and Esmir might not be of Carles/Gustavo quality, but at least they try to split the opposition defense. We could have used one or two of them earlier. - That goal we conceded was just ugly. Rough giveaway from Kaye, and then a strange misreading of the play from Petrovic (who, to be fair, was otherwise amazing). The really bad: We're inundated with injuries once again. I'd at least like to hope the Carles injury is as "not serious" as promised...but losing Bye hurts. And then there's Bou...and Wood... who are again victims of the NER disappearing act. I'm almost wondering if we're living in a science fiction movie, and Revs players get their souls trapped in the basement of Red Robin or something, or are turned into largemouth bass, destined to spend months swimming in the tank at Bass Pro... Hopefully the rest will do us good. At least this competition was fun, and we avoided the dreaded month-long break. Onward.
The first half stunk. Williams didn't get the lineup right and it seemed like an endless succession of sideways passes by the back line. The midfield couldn't advance the ball. The subs Williams finally made changed the game in the 2nd half. Nacho is certainly not his brother, but he's not a bad backup for him. And Esmir had I think his best moment as a Rev. Huge goal, well taken. They needed to avoid a shootout down their two best PK guys, but it is what it is. Jones struggled all night to cross the ball. He's better on the left than the right. Unlike Jones, Spaulding could at least get off his crosses, but most were too close to the keeper. Did they even take a corner kick in the first half? And give Querataro credit. Their game seemed to be toughness and defending and they executed it well. They were not an easy side to play against - especially with a ref who seemed determined to let a lot go. Final thought, I didn't realize that Querataro was the team that had that crazy fan violence last year. Coincidentally vs Atlas. Mexican authorities claimed no fatalities but independent journalists said several Atlas fans were killed. About 25 were 'officially' injured per the police. Journalist reports said the total was lot higher. Fans were banned from their home games after that. I remember seeing some of the footage online - it was wild - and not in a good way.
I'm so conflicted....of course I have to root for the REVs, but I'm not going to lie, I'm ok with them being out at this point. I'm fine with them having some time to rest before they head into the home stretch of the MLS season. I never really cared about winning this tournament. Now we have to root for Nashville to lose so that the Revs/Nashville game isn't post-poned.
There was nothing from Nacho... nothing. And there were a couple of moments where it almost appeared no one wanted to give him the ball. The Revs absolutely have to stop "Belichicking" this bullshit with the injuries. No Wood, no Bou, no Gil and absolutely no warning to the fans? The fact that we even made it to penalties is shocking.
For as bad as the Petro goal he gave up was, he saved 2 clear cut goals, so it's basically even in my book. Revs were outplayed against Atlas and won and outplayed Queretaro and lost. My biggest complaint was that there were only two minutes of stoppage time, when there were 2 goals, a few "injuries" and subs, I was expecting over 5
In both halves the timing was weird. The worst part is the Revs were controlling that last few minutes, the crowd was completely energized ... and two minutes?
One more thing to add ... the first quarter of the game, the attacking plan was to cross into the box ... with one f'in option available? Vrioni was the only one in the box multiple times with 4/5 defenders around him. There's a reason we had two shots on goal all game.
Up until the triple-sub, the Revs were just too conservative and too reluctant to shoot. A whole half+ and 0 shots on goal? I liked Harkes in an advanced position - I didn't like Polster in an advanced position (he slowed the attack, just like he slows the transition from dmid). I like MAK as the dmid. I thought Buck looked good and was taking the initiative to fill the gap with Gil out. I was disappointed to see him subbed out. I think we're making DuJuan Jones (who was on a good run of form in this tournament) less effective by switching him to the right; we'd be better off leaving him where he's comfortable and figuring out something else on the right - Bolma, Farrell, ... maybe even Buck, who seems to have the versatility to play almost anywhere. Live, it was tough to tell - did we hit weak shots or did the Queretaro keeper make great saves? Scoring is about seizing the initiative, doing the unexpected or being creative - not methodically building, building, building, ... We were over-valuing possession and allowed them to anticipate our interior passes.
We have 2 elite for MLS full backs in Jones and bye. We have 1 backup quality guy in Spaulding. Farrell and polster can also play on the right, but can't cover end line to end line. Every other full back option on the roster is somewhere between worryingly unproven and outright bad I think if we're worried about attacking width we're better off playing more wide mids over packing in the CMs. Ema wasnt as good yesterday, probably in part due to not being partnered with Jones, but also because carles wasn't there to play him in. My preference however is to have harkes buck and kaye as our strong ball confident midfield 3 (ask credit to polster's nice puss to esmir)
A few random thoughts: I agree with @rkupp way too slow. I thought I was watching the US men passing it between the CBs so they can claim they won the possession battle...whoopee! I think Polster has slipped a little this year or he's worn out from all the minutes. With the addition of MAK and Harkes the Revs mid-field should be able to rotate players a little to give everybody an occasional breather. That is if they can keep players healthy. At halftime, I was begging for Esmir to get in the game, take out Polster and move Harkes back. They didn't listen to me completely, but another brilliant coaching job from my couch! :-} I think the Revs have a fairly deep squad, when healthy, but if Carlos isn't in the lineup they really struggle to score goals. They really need to work on finding a player or system to create more scoring chances. To at least take some pressure off the defense.
5 of the 8 Round of 16 matches wound up going to penalties. Only 2 Liga MX teams are still alive for the quarterfinals, with Querétaro playing at Philly and Monterey playing at LAFC. All 4 quarterfinal games are on Friday.
That NASHVILLE-AMERICA game was a heart breaker. I'm planning on going to the Aug 20th road match in Nashville and therefore needed desperately for Nashville to lose last night.........AND THEY LOST! Players shaking hands, game is over....UNTIL WAIT...almost 8 minutes later the refs decide to go to VAR.....and naturally the game-winning play is overturned and Nashville goes on to win. I feel like I'm not catching any breaks at the moment.
I know a few people that are trying to make the trip, including @Minutemanii. But yeah, that ending was outrageous. And funny as hell.
Pretty much agree in full, though I'd like to see one of those unproven options (Bolma) given a chance. And, while Spaulding is a far cry from Jones on the left, he's vastly improved and is still improving and works pretty doggedly to recover when necessary. Interesting that you noted Polster's pass to Esmir - I agree, but what really stood out was how hard and direct that ball was (and Esmir made a really tough trap/turn/shoot in traffic look pretty effortless) - that's the kind of pass that we were too reluctant to make for most of the game.
A few other thoughts that haven't been covered: The Revs did not have a shot on goal until Esmir scored. Jones should have scored when he was wide open at the back post, but his header went off the crossbar. Vrioni had a chance to win it at the death, but missed the ball. I know he was tangling with a defender, but a DP has to put that in the net. Prediction: the winner of LAFC vs Monterey will go on to win the whole thing.
The announcer wondered if they were playing on grass would the ball have bounced as high as it did on turf? I had the same thought, it is an interesting question, unfortunately, it is probably without an answer
Probably not, but he really needed to head that closer to the goal line - it's shouldn't have even been close. IMO, that's one of the difference between real scorers (Gil, Bou, Vrioni, ...) and others - they focus on placement when maximum power isn't required.
Final four set. Messi-ami crushes Charlotte, heads to Philly who nabbed a winner at the death against Queretaro. Nashville smoked Minnesota, and Monterrey shocked LAFC with a late winner after coming back from 2-0 down at the half. So with Nashville winning, that means our game on 8/20 needs to be rescheduled. So do they just push it back a couple days and make it a mid-week game (like on 8/23), or will we not play again until 8/26 at Montreal and then sandwich the Nashville game in somewhere during Sept./Oct.?