Deuce

Hello, all!

After a longer hiatus than I had intended, the Fort is back in business! The off-week was a time I really thought I was going to do a color piece on a couple of Revs, and maybe a bit on the MLS, but that was going to be a pretty bad idea just because I had so much work and, well...frankly, it wouldn't have been all that interesting.

That aside, the Revs take on the Carolina Railhawks just a few minutes away from me tonight. Hopefully the boys are rested and ready to play a tough game, the Railhawks aren't such a bad team. They have performed very well against the MLS team they faced in the Open Cup (Chicago), and the Revs need to be ready for a scrap if they want to win.

Out of the Revs' office came a press release about signing a Gambian U-20 national player during the off-week. He seems to have the skills to be able to play in MLS, but who knows whether this international signing will be good (a la Shalrie) or bad (Khano Smith). It has been pretty spotty in the past with internationals playing for the Revs, but who knows, this one may just work out in Nicol's favor.

One international that the Revs will not sign is Dusan Petkovic, the Boston Globe confirmed today. It seems that being rusty and old has an effect on your chances of playing in the MLS, surprise. It wasn't too long ago that MLS teams were signing washouts left and right (Jose Manuel Abundis). Glad to see that Nicol is making sure the Revs stay at the top of their game, and not just signing internationals because the rest of the world thinks that Americans play bad soccer.

And as for Deuce, he played a fantastic game for Fulham against Tottenham. So good, he has FOX Sports raving about him.

Yep. Fantastic...

Good day, you all.

Antonio Puerta, el mundo esta contigo.

A bit of sobering news out of Seville, Spain today. Antonio Puerta, 22 year-old left midfielder at Sevilla, died in the hospital after suffering a heart attack on the pitch against Getafe.

I had never seen the guy play soccer before this morning. I hadn't heard of him until Monday morning. By all accounts he was a good player and a greater friend, a guy only two years older than me about to become a father. He inspired his teammates and his fans, and his story is absolutely heartbreaking. As a testament to his character, thousands flocked to Sevilla's home ground Sanchez Pizjuan today in order to pay their respects to their friend.

I remember hearing about Marc Vivien Foe when he died on the pitch at a Confederation's Cup match against Columbia, and I remember being very moved watching the final versus France when Cameroonian teammates held up his picture and paid tribute to him before the match. I remember France pointing to the sky after their winning goal. This morning I found about ten tribute videos dedicated to him, as well as Miklos Feher, who collapsed and died on the pitch while he was playing for Benfica. His story, something I had not seen or heard yet, was just as heartbreaking as Puerta's and Foe's...he collapsed after flashing the ref an ironic smile after receiving a yellow card. People loved the guy for who he was, not what position he played...you could see that in the faces of the horrified teammates, visibly shocked and saddened on the pitch, not sad because they had lost a game or lost a player due to injury. They had lost a very good friend.

And now Clive Clarke, a player at Leicester in England, has suffered a heart attack in the locker room at halftime and was in very serious condition at last check.

It really puts things into perspective. Today Sevilla fans aren't wondering who their team should've traded or who they should've gotten through free agency; they aren't talking about winning the Copa del Rey or the Champion's League or the Spanish Primera. They just want their friend back. In a way, the feelings resonate through us all; we all want Puerta back because of what he means to us. We never want our heroes or friends to die.

Sevilla, el mundo esta contigo. May you rest in peace, Antonio Puerta.

Decaffeinated

Dude, I've been waiting to use that headline for the longest time...

Took another three points from the Red Bulls last night, and because of certain reasons (work, life, work) I wasn't in the Fort nor at home with a brew in front of the TV. As much as I would've loved being there, I was kind of glad I wasn't; the replays showed that the Patriots have once again taken over as rulers of the Razor and mucked up the field for the rest of the season. Nothing like a later-season game against a regional rival to drive in the necessity of getting a true home field for our soccer club.

Back to the game, though. I thought we did reasonably well, the defense let Jozy Altidore get free and Angel saw that, making it possible for Altidore to once again show that he is a great young player. I thought Taylor's goal was pretty weak, but a goal is a goal and the way RBNY was defending at that point I couldn't have asked for any more. Then, amazingly and hysterically, we had three points gift-wrapped and handed to us by Red Bulls' Jon Conway and it was all over at that point. It will be a good victory for the boys in blue, who now own the best record in the MLS and look strong and healthy.

No word on Dusan Petkovic, yet. It should still be happening, but who knows if that will be a good thing at all. I'm not sold on the idea of signing an old, unproven defender based purely on the fact that he is European. Maybe if I had seen him a little more, or played in a league that is stronger than MLS, but the enthusiasm that Dallas feels for Denilson and Galaxy feels for Beckham just isn't there for me.

Then again, he could be a late blooming gem...

Good night.

The Dempsey Rule

Good morning.

Some big news today, it looks like the Revs are finally about to utilize the Designated Player rule. They have called Dusan Petkovic back for training. First of all, it solves the problem with Heaps being out for a little while now, we do need a defender who is going to be able to handle big offenses such as Red Bull and Houston. He is a very good and experienced Serbian national-teamer...kind of. He had played in twelve games for Serbia before a World Cup call up, and his dad runs the team. Oh, did I mention that is dad runs the team? Apparently, he took himself out injured, and dad didn't take him off the squad and he ended up being an unused sub in a loss to Ivory Coast. He is very experienced; at the age of thirty-three he has some seasons under his belt. I actually trust Steve Nicol, as a former defender he knows what he wants to see out of his back three, and as this will probably happen Petkovic must still be good and he must be a performer. It will be interesting to see how this all works out for he boys in blue.

In other news, Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News is of the opinion that the MLS is going to need much more than Beckham to be big in this country. While I agree with the title I don't agree with most of her article itself. It would be foolish to think that within a year or so of Becks' arrival to the league, soccer would have better TV ratings than baseball or football. Foolish. These are the established sports in our country, entrenched so firmly in our culture that we use expressions derived from each sport ("on the five-yard line," "hit it out of the park") in different situations, and most of us know exactly what they all mean. It would be hard for football to make itself big just because of one good player, if it was only 13 years old. I guess I fall into that category of "true MLS believers" that Ms. Killion was talking about.

The truth of the matter is, no sport is as likely to happen in this country as soccer. Hockey's only real problem with getting a lot of play and attention was the fact that not too many people play it, and it can only be played recreationally in one season of the year. In many cases, youth clubs have neither the facilities nor the money for gear that the sport requires and so it slowly died off because it was hard to get people to play. And even then there was the Wayne Gretzky and the Patrick Roy period where everything that hockey touched was golden and it was genuinely an American sport. It was a short lived period in American history.

When Pele came here thirty years ago, he came to a country without soccer. Nobody really played it, and not too many people knew about or cared about the sport back then. It was only really the people who loved European soccer that really talked about and admired the game, but there weren't too many of those. The NASL was mostly one man's experiment of how to fill a stadium with supporters of a sport that they have never seen, and that experiment has become wildly successful and it is the cornerstone of American soccer today.

Eighteen million people play the sport in this country. It is by far and away the largest of all of the youth sports programs in the country, and among the kids of my generation, the twenty-somethings, it is a sport we relate to more than any other sport because almost all of us played it at some point. And we could play it, it isn't football (where you have to be a feat of human engineering) or baseball (where the needle is god), but it was a simple, beautiful sport played by normal people. It is that fact, along with many others, that has allowed soccer to thrive among the future leaders and TV viewers of America, and it is that fact which will pump up the MLS.

Again, it isn't realistic to assume that MLS will be the country's most watched league by the next World Cup, although it is reasonably safe to assume that most of the strength of the U.S. team will come from MLS players. This league won't die like NASL. When NASL went down there was a high attendance at Cosmos games and a very low attendance for other teams' games, with the biggest exception being the Seattle Sounders. Nowadays, each of the leagues thirteen teams has an average of fourteen-thousand fans in the seats for each game, a figure that has stayed steady since the league's inception even though no player is allowed to get paid over a million dollars. Now that the league has established itself it will keep American talent on this shore and more and more Europeans will come over, and over time people will see the beauty of the sport. This season has the highest TV rating of all seasons past, too, which is heartening.

Anyways, I'm waffling. DAMN YOU FC DALLAS!! Denilson sure would have been nice...

Have a good one.

Coming Home Again

It is reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally dead on the news front this week. Nobody signed, nobody dropped.

It sounds like Heaps will probably be missing a few games after his injury on Sunday. Apparently he was in the airport on crutches that evening. Could be just a cramp but crutches are never a good sign.

This means that James Riley will probably have to come in and start being really big really quickly. I liked what I saw from him early on in the season when he was filling in for Heaps on right back while Jay filled in for Parkhurst in the middle. He played well in his sub appearance after Jay went off injured as well, so I guess we will wait and see how good he can continue to be. The other option is Gary Flood, who played very well for a couple of weeks and then, if I remember correctly, let Eddie Johnson walk by him on his way to a hat-trick. Could be wrong. But I was pretty impressed with him early on in the season. Those two guys, plus the fact that Jay has been playing some really horrible soccer recently, leads me to believe that this will not hurt us at all.

The Washington Post's Steven Goff reports that Israel Sesay is coming to MLS this week. Because Toronto and Columbus are so horrible already have some drafting done, they cannot get him. We already have a fantastic young striker, yes, but apparently this kid is also amazing and we could possibly use him as a winger to replace GodNo Smith on the left. Plus he is seventeen, and Taylor isn't going to play forever.

We come back home to play the Red Bulls on Saturday. As Angel did not play in the Columbia v. Mexico game last night, we can expect him to try and be a menace in our back three. I really home we can go on a run of victories after last week's game because we will need it going into the last months of the season here shortly. I expect Steeeeeeeeve to be back in the lineup, and I think he and Shalrie will be playing deep defensive mid in order to compensate for our lack of defenders. Who knows what will happen though, Nicol likes to do things like that so that is what I'll go with. I can only hope Steve starts on the right, Shalrie isn't so defensive it hurts and Ginger can keep up with Jozy and Angel.

A note on Jozy Altidore: I know, I am a Revolution fan and by that fact alone I should hate everything that is New York but my God, that kid is amazing. He is a national-team quality starter that hopefully can help plead our U.S. case in Europe (where we fell 1-0 to Sweden yesterday).

Finally I was going to go on a rant about GodNo but I decided to hold off. I figured ten in the morning was not a good time to drink my sorrows away.

Have a good one, all.

The Refs Are Trying to Kill Us

In what was probably the worst refereed game in MLS history, we beat KC last night 1-nil. I thought we did a really good job of going out there and being pretty physical early on, even though the boys have now played five times in two weeks. Big props to Wells Thompson and his improvement over last game's performance, I thought he and Riley showed their grit while Shalrie and Larentowicz held down the midfield brilliantly. Overall, it was a good performance by the boys.

Parkhurst summed it up pretty well:

“I think it was a great performance. It was really gutsy. We were disappointed with our play on Thursday versus Colorado, and we wanted to come out here and prove a point. We knew it was a big game and we needed three points. I think we did what we needed to do. We fought hard and scored a goal and got the result.”

I'm glad he saw the gutsiness of the game because when it comes down to it, the officiating was horrible. No fouls were called until later in the second half, until which point some of the tackles had me thinking that someone was going to have to commit murder in order to receive a yellow card, never mind a red. I understand as a fan that you want to keep play going and flowing, and you want to see some physicality but as a ref you have to show respect for the law of the game and you have to protect these players.

It wasn't the Revs he had to protect either, it was everyone. I thought Jimmy Conrad got utterly destroyed by Khano Smith in a play that could have easily been carded, and Wells Thompson almost got his leg taken off. Shalrie got kicked from behind and shoved to the ground and the worst that Colombano received was a yellow. That being said I was really glad that even though they are tired and they're away from home, they still went out there to play and that, I think, was the best part about the game.

Last night we lost Heaps for who knows how long, but Stevie (Ralston) will probably be fit for the next match and Noons could also be healthy. We have five days of rest before taking on Red Bull at home. Now, imagine for a second that we come out with the same kind of strength and will to win when we are all rested and ready for the next game. Of course, we may just sit down and let Juan Pablo wreak havok on us. The important thing for the guys to get is to realize that last night's mentality will win them the cup, they just have to keep at it and be good and want it for the rest of the season.

One day this week I will get into how bad Khano was, but not today. I'm too sad thinking about it.

To all three of you, thanks for reading, I'm trying to get this more popular. Hope you enjoy it at any rate.

Have a good day.

Ginger v. English Press, Round 1

Morning, all.

Bit of a slow day today, nothing really going on. We play KC tomorrow night, and we have a chance to look like a team who is challenging for the cup. We do actually have to play well in order to win, and although it kinda goes without saying I think the boys have forgotten that. We will see how Eddie Johnson's pace suffers with a bit of a twisted ankle, too.

In other news, I came across a British show that is geared towards promoting MLS! You'll find the four episodes so far on that YouTube member page. Also, in episode three there is a cool interview with "New England Revolution defender Jeff Larwenno...Larven...Lawrank...Larentowicz." In the fourth you'll find a locker room interview of the Revs, and a very shocked British man who is appalled at the proximity of the press to the players.

Anyways, going to go find some trouble to get into for tomorrow night.

Let's go Revs!