Nicol’s Defense Steals the Show

Tay­lor Twelll­man and Steve Ral­ston seem to have got­ten most of the ink this sea­son for the Rev­o­lu­tion, and why not? Ral­ston broke the all time MLS assists record set by his men­tor Car­los “El Pibe” Valder­rama ear­lier this sea­son and Twell­man as he did again last night has been break­ing oppo­nents hearts with improb­a­ble goals.

But last night’s 1–0 Rev­o­lu­tion vic­tory over the Chicago Fire, a win that sent New Eng­land to its 4th MLS Cup title in 6 sea­sons has to be cred­ited to a stout defense. Avery John, a vet­eran of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2006 World Cup Cam­paign, MLS Defender of the year Michael Parkhurst, and the always solid Jay Heaps were on form snuff­ing out sev­eral late Chicago attacks on the goal. Shal­rie Joseph was awe­some as always at the hold­ing mid­field posi­tion, and most impor­tantly did not pick up a yel­low card that would have seen him sus­pended for MLS Cup.

Cua­hatomac Blanco had a nice match for the Fire but didn’t have that extra some­thing he seems to have from time to time to break down the Rev­o­lu­tion. Chris Rolfe played well for the Fire, and Paulo Wan­chope in what is likely to be his last match with the Fire had some decent chances but failed to finish.

Steve Nicol and his largely home grown club (The entire squad either went to school in the United States or grew up in the USA, includ­ing for­eign nation­als who play for other national teams) have once again reached MLS Cup in this era of big name inter­na­tional sign­ings for the league. Could Nicol’s team win the Cup and show that despite the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of MLS, ulti­mate faith still must be placed in Amer­i­can player and oth­ers develop by the Amer­i­can system?