Superliga Matchday Two: New England-Santos Laguna

Sec­ond Half

After lis­ten­ing to Telefutura’s announc­ers spend the major­ity of the first half talk­ing about Sven, the cam­era pans to him in the press­box. Much like his time in Eng­land, the dreams and hopes of a foot­ball mad nation are on Mr. Eriks­son. The last time he wasn’t quite up to the job. Has he learned any­thing this time around, or will he con­tinue to be a great club man­ager who is some­what lost at the inter­na­tional level? New Engalnd’s goal was a thing of beauty and quite frankly what we expected in our pre­view show: the speed of the Revs and the style of African foot­ball played by Nyassi, Mansally, and Dube is unlike any­thing most Mex­i­can teams ever see. Not only the speed but the type of move­ments on the ball and the sup­port­ing runs. Kheli Dube knew where to be posi­tioned for the cross and credit to Pat Phe­lan the for­mer TFC man for the well sold dum­mie which seemed to freeze Oswaldo Sanchez for enough time to give Dube a chance to pick out the tar­get and nail home the goal.

New Eng­land was out­stand­ing in the sec­ond half. Yes they were a man up, but the style of play was dic­tated by them as was the pace of the match. A great start to the cham­pi­onship for the Revs and Steve Nicol.

First Half

A hideous look­ing turf sur­face, a first for Superliga. San­tos looks lost early on because of the turf and New Eng­land started slow as well. I’m watch­ing all of the Superliga matches in HD, which is a bonus of Tele­fu­tura except when sub­jected to a match on turf when I wish I didn’t have HD at all. The build up play was slow early in the match. Add that to a home crowd in Foxboro that is half asleep espe­cially when com­pared with the ruckus atmos­phere at RFK last night.

New England’s spac­ing much like the DC’s yes­ter­day was poor. A lack of def­i­n­i­tion to the shape of the side is a typ­i­cal trait of New Eng­land though and unlike United they seem able to cope with play­ers bunched up and guys seem­ingly out of posi­tion. Chris Albright has been solid at the back for New Eng­land and Michael Parkhurst as expected has been a rock at the back for the Revs. Matt Reis’ save on Oribe Per­alta was the high­light of the first half before Juan Pablo Rodriguez unfor­tu­nate send­ing off. That hav­ing been said the car­ry­ing on off the San­tos play­ers led by Mexican-American left footer Edgar Castil­lio was child­ish and beyond typ­i­cal dis­sent. After that The Revs seemed to gain a spring in their step that should serve them well in half two.