Why did Cropper still take a goal kick (long, no less) with a hurt hammy? Is anyone coaching this team?
So the number of New England players finishing the game ended up being greater than the number of goals scored. Though it could easily have been 8-0 with 8 men on the field for New England, if Cropper had been forced off.
I think we can say the MLS shorthanded advantage is well and truly dead this season. After years of man-down teams somehow slightly outscoring the teams with the man advantage, in 2017 the goal difference for the team with the extra man is something in the +60 range.
Imagine what information you could have had on tonight's referees if only someone had started this thread before I left for work. Shame on you all.
Is Heaps still going to be employed by the weekend? He prepared his team for the wrong kind of football. What we're the NER players thinking over the first half!? Shockingly poor discipline on their part.
So I notice history was just made in another way. New England just became the first team in MLS history to be held without a shot in a game.
I'm not saying I don't believe this, but... I don't believe this. Really? Who said this? I have a hard time believing this never happened before. That's a bet I would have lost, for sure.
I didn't start paying attention until last summer when Seattle narrowly avoided that fate with a last-minute shot. It was widely reported, both at the time of that game and again after the USMNT was held without a shot against Argentina not long afterward. I've at least glanced at the stat sheet for every MLS game played since then, and I would have noticed.
Doesn't matter. The Laws say "denies an obvious goal scoring opportunity." Doesn't have to be a definite goal. Yellow isn't an option here. If it denied a goal or a goal-scoring chance, it's red.
BTW, zero-shot games are extremely rare even in complete mismatches. I wanted Klinsmann out from early 2015 onward, and for a BigSoccer argument after the Argentina match, I went and looked up just how rare they were. Seattle's narrow avoidance of MLS ignominy was widely reported, of course. I pulled up the stats for every USMNT shutout loss since January 1, 1994, and I would have gone farther if it didn't become increasingly hard to find stats going deeper into the 90s. I looked at every shutout loss suffered by the bottom teams of every Euro 2016 qualifying group. I even managed to dig up stats from American Samoa's historically awful 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign in which they lost 31-0 to Australia and lost every other game by 5 or more goals without scoring a single time. I didn't see a single team held without a shot, not even American Samoa.
OK, you don't have to take my word for it any more, it's been officially reported. From the MLS recap: "AS BAD AS IT GETS: Not only were New England demolished on the scoreboard and not only were they on the wrong end of two Video Review decisions, but they also became the first team in MLS history to finish a game without registering a single shot. Going down to nine men in the first half obviously played a major role in that, but this was all in all a record-setting catastrophe for the Revolution."
First touch from Reyna on that goal is just sick--40 yard ball DOA on his instep and set for the shot. Damn.