Personally, I was hoping for an all-Mass third round, but it wasn’t to be. The Pioneers looked pretty solid for a division 3 team, however, with two really stand-out players. What bummed me out, though, was the level of fouling that happened. And it wasn’t just from the Pioneers.

Granted, they seemed to start it with weird charges and trips and fists, but the Rhinos seemed to feel right at home throwing it back, too.

I’m waiting on some quotes from the Pioneers on the game and the Revs about facing Rochester. I’ll drop them in here when they arrive. As far as the Rhinos, you can read their side of the story here.

In the meantime, enjoy the full US Open Cup bracket, or get a breakdown of the scores by game.

From a statistics standpoint, the Revs and Rhinos are close with Revs leading slightly 1-0-2 in all meetings, the last meeting seeing the Revs win 4-3 in extra time. The Revs should easily win this one, though, as long as they don’t resort to the kind of charing, bullying football the Rhinos seemed to employ yesterday. In their defense, though, perhaps they played to their opponents level?

Conversationally speaking, I’m going to drop a plug here for the webcasting services provided by USL Live. We watched the game while munching on curry last night, and it was great. The image was really good, sound quality was great, and it was just darned convenient to be watching/listening while working on our computers. I did learn, though, that I need more RAM if I’m going to be doing that more often. I know that some other games had audio streams available, too, through TeamLine which seemed fairly solid, as well.

More on the Revs versus Rhinos as the quotes come in.

Though the first 10 minutes contained some nailbiting moments for New England Revolution fans, we needn’t have worried. Pat Noonan and Andy Dorman both notched goals tonight in a Revolution routing of Toronto.

The win was a necessary one for the Revs, and moves them back to the top of the Eastern Conference with 22 points, one ahead of New York Red Bulls who have a bye week. Kansas City is in third with 20 points, though, so the Revs are only truly safe until tomorrow.

Some notes of interest:
1. Wells Thompson continues to hold the ball too long and confuse his opponents, and it’s a fantastic thing to see. Say what you will, there’s far too few displays of quality, trickster dribbling, and I’ll take it where I can get it.
2. Shalrie Joseph had a phenomenal game tonight. So much so, that in the post-game shots it looked as though Danny Dichio was asking for his autograph.
3. Adam Cristman continues to solidify his place in my mind as a quality player. It took a while for him to grow on me. I’m at the point now, though, where I’m glad his ours.
4. Jeff Larentowicz was replaced by Gary Flood after half time. Larentowicz took a hard shot to the right eye and seemed a little loupy afterwards.

The important thing: we won, and we did it handily and with a modicum of style. The Revs can continue to build on their work tonight, and I think we can expect some increasingly solid performances from them tonight.

Coming up:
Everyone knows at this point that Joey Franchino is out for the season and that Daniel Hernandez has been released. What does this mean for the Revs’ roster? There’s not a lot of information available, but head coach Steve Nicol has hinted that they’re keeping track of some players both “known and unknown”. I’ll keep on top of it as much as I can and post here.

More later, but this was a good and positive result for the Revs.

In short, a frustrated Jay Heaps pulled Herron to the ground around the 40th minute or so. Three minutes later, Herron figured he’d retaliate with a vicious elbow to Heaps’ face inside the box on the next play. A quick, furtive glance around him to make sure no refs were watching, and Herron let fly. Petulant bastard.

I’m disgusted, and I hope Herron gets banned for a few matches over this. The Revs held their composure, though, improved their game in the second half, and finished well albeit with only one point. The deserved three.

More tomorrow.

If the local media and other various reports are to be relied upon, it seems that our own Adam Cristman is making a big hit with the Revs. My hopes for the season are improving, for sure. Let’s see what Coach Nicol had to say about his fourth-round draft pick:

“He just wants to score,” Revolution coach Steve Nicol said of Cristman. “He is a wee bit like Taylor. It’s all about desire. He has that little bit extra when it is between him and the defender. He also has a good football brain and puts himself in a position where he has a chance to score.”

It all sounds good to me. Though, hopefully the piece of Cristman that is a “wee bit” like Twellman isn’t the bit that likes to caught offside, eh? Although, I would rather have a pair of strikers itching to be behind the defense than waiting for the midfielders to make a move before getting into position. I know there has to be a balance, but the sign of a good forward is that, well, they play forward.

At any rate, from all accounts it sounds as though the Revs fielded a solid 3-5-2 (a favorite of Coach Nicol’s, and one of the Revs’ historically best formations), even without Michael Parkhurst (shoulder) and Pat Noonan (hernia). More importantly, it seems they fielded themselves with a once-thought-of-as-disgruntled Shalrie Joseph. Though, he has always maintained that he will continue to work hard while with the Revs.

He, along with Jeff Larentowicz seem to have done a fine job in Midfield, Joseph coming up with one of the balls forward to Cristman. Not to mention, Matt Reis missed the game due to the flu, and James Riley filled in for Parkhurst as DC. I know it’s just a pre-season, less-than-stellar-calibre game, but I’m starting to get my hopes up.

There are plenty of writeups about the weekend match: here and here to name just two.

If any readers out there have pictures, video, or comments on this match, feel free to forward or post them here.

Catch you next time, but until then, I leave you with a couple of shots of the weekend game from a reader in New Orleans.

Thanks for the images, Sean!

There are match reports to spare out in interested parts of the Internet; hell, even the Boston Globe deigned to turn in a report. After that, all the usual suspects contributed: New England Soccer News (LINK), Soccer New England (LINK), as well as the official Revolution website (LINK).

Once again, however, none of these can hold a candle to a babelfish translation of the write-up from the local, Cancun paper (again, hat-tip to The Magpie):

“Nevertheless during the development of the first part the dominion was completely of the Pioneers who made the cost and on the brink of madness maintained the armchairs to the spectators with some plays of danger. It was beside the point incredible what happened in Cancún 86 to Pioneers who had several clear opportunities of goal, nevertheless the aim was not the adapted one being saved in several occasions the doorman of the Revolution.”

The brink of madness. Yessss…

If a 1-0 win doesn’t seem cause for celebration – and it isn’t, really – the starting line-up offers some solace: the record shows that Revs coach Steve Nicol fielded a team largely comprised of newbies, guys like Ryan Solle (at forward?), Wells Thompson, Amaechi Igwe, and Miguel Gonzalez. Wholesale second-half subs brought on the big guns for the second half, which appears to have done enough to get the Revs away from the brink of madness (again, yesssss….).

So, good result, good to see a young guy like Cristman scoring – though I’m going to withhold judgment till I see the guy play in “real” games – and nice to see the team at 4-0-0.

Speaking of the Revs’ preseason record, though, the prospect that they’ll enter the regular season with a perfect record isn’t making me optimistic as it should. Sadly, that’s a quirk of scheduling and I’m not totally sure it’s healthy. The Los Angeles Galaxy remains the only equal opposition thus far and only one more of New England’s preseason friendlies – this one against CD Olimpia of Honduras – will pit them against a truly competitive team; the other remaining game comes against the Professional Development League’s New Orleans Shell Shockers. It’s possible I’m alone here, but I find this a bit unnerving. One of the favorite gripes against the U.S. Men’s team is that they face weak opposition, which ill prepares them for the big-stage encounters that follow. Does that same logic apply to the Revs’ preseason?

I suppose we’ll find out before too long…

They can say this, though the less they elaborate, the better. When asked, just say that the New England Revolution beat Inter Playa del Carmen 7-0. And, whatever you do, don’t mention that Inter plays in Mexico’s Segunda Division, which, in spite of the name, happens to be Mexico’s third division. At least that’s what some guy wrote in the Revs’ forum on BigSoccer; the same guy, who posts as Disco Dale, also noted that a “mate” who attended the game called and told him the Revs’ finishing was lethal.

Judging from the fact that Twellman knocked in four of the Revs’ seven goals, it’s likely they were referring to the Revs’ star man. Other things to note include two New England ejections: one for Jeff Larentowicz (hard foul, apparently followed quickly by dissent) and Joe Franchino (no one says; possibly for having a low center of gravity). You can read it all in the various match reports posted across the web: there’s the Revolution’s in-house, official report; New England Soccer News looks to have copied and edited the official piece for brevity; Soccer New England’s report contained sufficiently different phrasing that itset me to wondering whether they send their own people to follow the Revs…and, if so, how I can get that gig…in spite of not living in New England.

So, good stuff. Even if it came against weaker, possibly much weaker opposition. New-guy Adam Cristman scored one, as did Khano Smith and Willie Sims. In spite of my concerns (noted here, if only briefly), James Riley seemed to hold up all right in the middle – though the reports make it an open question as to whether he had much with which to deal. Still, it never hurts to beat a team you’re supposed to beat, especially when you blow them out of the water.

Another Segunda Division side, Pioneros de Cancun, is up next. And that raises only one question: are the Revs testing themselves hard enough ahead of the season?

From the Revs’ site:

“The Revs sustained the attack in the first half, controlling possession and spending most of the period in their attacking half of the field…In the second half, Revs head coach Steve Nicol made wholesale substitutions, changing all 11 players on the field. New England continued to attack…”

Mmm…actually, that one doesn’t excerpt all that well. The best news comes with the chatter about some new signings and trialists having decent games: draftees Chris Loftus and Wells Thompson were involved in goals, the latter directly; trialist Jorge Ramirez (or, Jorge Eduardo Ramirez Tabacchi for short) scored while, while his comrade-in-auditioning Takuya Yamada made the mess that led to the first-half own-goal that brought the Revs level.

Meanwhile, here’s what the (always blunt – I like it) Royal Gazette had to say:

“This was a game that the Revs never looked like losing, despite conceding an early goal, as they dictated play throughout almost the entire 90 minutes…(big jump)…[Bermudian 'keeper Timmy] Figureido might have been the busiest man on the pitch as time and again he was called upon to make desperate saves.”

Anyway, looks like a case of so far, so good. Then again, a stumble here would likely have dumped ants in the pants of Revs fans across the country.

Next up: the Los Angeles Galaxy; that one comes Thursday. I’ll do what I can by way of a preview in tomorrow’s edition.