Shorthanded Revolution still have plenty of fight

Oct 31, 2008 - 10:57 AM By Bill Bernardi PA SportsTicker Soccer Editor

Undermanned and, in some respects, underappreciated, the New England Revolution made quite the statement on Thursday.

Sure, the end result was a scoreless draw with the second-seeded Chicago Fire in the first leg of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, but many associated with the Revolution felt fairly content with the outcome.

Well, considering the circumstances.

Third-seeded New England was playing without injured captain Steve Ralston (broken leg) and forward Taylor Twellman (concussion-like symptoms), while midfielder Khano Smith was suspended two matches by the league for what it called "an egregious challenge" on Kansas City Wizards forward Herculez Gomez last weekend.

Also, defender Gabriel Badilla sat out the contest after receiving a red card in his previous match. He will return when the Revolution travel to Chicago for the pivotal second leg of the home-and-home, aggregate-goal series on November 6.

To douse the Fire's potent offense on Thursday, the Revolution relied on defenders Michael Parkhurst, Jay Heaps and Chris Albright and midfielder Chris Tierney, who collectively kept Chicago on the perimeter. For his part, Tierney was one of five Revolution players who entered the contest with no postseason experience, joining teammates Mauricio Castro, Sainey Nyassi, Kenny Mansally and Kheli Dube.

"They are part of the team. That's the biggest compliment I can give them. We played as a team tonight," Revolution coach Steve Nicol said. "All those guys that have never played in the playoffs put on a great performance. Gave (everything) they had. But for a bit of luck and wee bit more guile, we could maybe could have won the game."

Their collective efforts were not lost on goalkeeper Matt Reis, who finished with five saves for his eighth career playoff shutout

"It's the playoffs, I hope guys step up," Reis said. "We've got to play our best, otherwise it's going to be an early exit."

In the ultimate sign of respect, Chicago coach Denis Hamlett admitted that he expected nothing less from the Revolution.

"We knew that they were going to put a competitive team on the field," Hamlett said. "They are still the defending Eastern Conference champions. We knew that this was going to be a hard game. We didn't come in here thinking that with missing all these guys that it was going to be an easy game, because if we did that, we would have basically just set ourselves up for failure."

Forced to work from the perimeter, midfielder Cuauhtemoc Blanco blasted a shot from the top of the box, but Reis held his ground and made the save in the 54th minute.

The tightly contested draw was a far different result from the three regular-season meetings between the teams. The Fire notched the victory in all three matches, outscoring the Revolution, 9-1 in the process.

"I think that obviously we would have liked to have tried to capitalize a little bit offensively and get some goals, but the way we have been playing lately, I think we'll take that 0-0 draw and build off that as a great team effort," Reis said. "The guys in front of me played amazing."

Underappreciated no more.