What an opener; 500th goal!

By: Sabin | April 14th, 2007

The New England Revolution beat Toronto FC 4 – 0 in the 2007 inaugural game at Gillette Stadium, allowing TFC very little possession of the ball in general. Goals scored were by Taylor Twellman (two of ‘em), Shalrie Joseph with a penalty kick and Andy Dorman with the Revs’ 500th goal.

If you guessed Dorman in tonight’s game in the 72nd minute, you came close to winning the 500 contest. He was the player with the magic number 500 off of a great cross from Steve Ralston. He’s my current bet for the Revs’ best chance of filling Clint Dempsey’s shoes, to be perfectly honest. I had guessed Dorman as the player who would score the 500th goal, but had said it would be in next week’s game, so I didn’t win that contest, but I impressed my wife by guessing it would be Dorman, so that’s pretty cool.

The Revs are off to a great start, for the most part. I’m not entirely impressed with Adam Cristman so far, though. He’ll probably get better — and has just in the past week — but he should be a bit more aggressive, in my mind.

He was much better tonight than last week, when he seemed to fall all of the time. Tonight, he drew a few fouls — including the one leading to Joseph’s penalty kick — and looked stronger, but I’m not sure what he brings to the game, to be honest. He’s not all that fast, he doesn’t seem terribly strong in the air, and his rhythm seems a bit off, too. That said, he and Twellman are syncing up fairly well, though it will be better to have Pat Noonan in at the start.

As far as Toronto FC goes, they definitely seem to be building a team for the long-term. That said, it seemed to me that Alecko Eskandarian was the best player on the field tonight, and that worries me a bit for them. At some point during the game, Revs’ communications director Brad Feldman mentioned that Toronto is not as bad as they looked tonight. For the Toronto fans, I sure hope not. They had a total of 5 or 6 shots on goal, none of which were of much quality.

And in the gossip corner, Matt Reis and Eskandarian seemed to continue their two-year long “relationship” tonight when Eskandarian came in with his arm raised under Reis who was leaping for a ball. When Reis landed, Eskandarian seemed to want to apologize, and Reis just moved out of his way. They both seemed to smirk a bit afterwards, so who knows if things are going better between the two or not.

The opening lineup was as follows (in the Revs’ typical 3-5-2).
Matt Reis (GK)
Avery John (D)
Pat Riley (D)
Jay Heaps (D)
Khano Smith (M; Wells Thompson 69′)
Shalrie Joseph (M; Gary Flood 87′)
Dorman (M)
Jeff Larentowicz (M)
Steve Ralston (M)
Adam Cristman (F; Pat Noonan 69′)
Taylor Twellman (F)

All in all, I have to say this was a great game for the Revs’ opener. The field looks great, the fans were in it, and the team was in sync. If they continue developing from here, we could see another competent run towards the MLS cup. If they get there this year, I think they’re going to win.

Thoughts on the game? Observations I’m not mentioning here? Drop me a line or leave a comment.