FOXBOROUGH — A few takeaways from the Saturday in soccer, including the Revolution’s 2-1 win over Chicago here at Gillette:
Make plans to be here next Saturday night, because it’s going to be a donnybrook
I’ve taken the liberty of looking ahead to your Labor Day Weekend plans, particularly those for next Saturday night. You can thank me later.
Patriots? They’re playing Thursday night. You’re fine.
Red Sox? They’re at the Angels, 9 p.m. start time. No worries about the overlap, you can listen to Joe Castiglione in the car; judging by a lot of comments on Twitter regarding Sox fans missing Don Orsillo, no one’s watching Dave O’Brien anyway.
Bruins and Celtics are still off.
Oregon at Auburn at 7:30 p.m. on ABC? OK, you may have me there … but hey, they make this great device. It’s called DVR. Use it for the three-and-a-half-hour football game. Watch the two-hour soccer game live and in person.
The reason? Next Saturday’s Revolution tilt against Toronto FC — sixth and seventh in the Eastern Conference, respectively — is going to be better than anything Week 1 in college football has to offer. Better than that last shark sighting north of Orleans (besides, there’s always Sunday and Monday for that, judging by the alerts I get on the Sharktivity app).
Thanks to the Revs’ 2-1 win over Chicago Saturday, New England is at 38 points. Thanks to Toronto’s 2-1 win over Montreal, the Reds have supplanted L’Impact in seventh, and stands at 37 points.
Right now, New England is 8-1-6 in their last 15 games since Brad Friedel was dismissed, including five wins at Gillette in eight tries since then. This team is re-establishing the Fortress Foxborough mentality little by little.
Not to mention Toronto is also 5-5-5 in that time, too.
And a Revolution win over the Reds next weekend, coupled with a DC United loss to Montreal at Stade Saputo, would lift The Boys In Blue to fifth place in the Eastern Conference. The last time the Revs have been that high in the table? June 2, 2018.
Tickets on sale now.
I was almost ready to put this one in the D column
Suffice it to say, I was pretty justified in that thinking. The Revolution had difficulty in solving Chicago’s defending — one New England foray saw five in the Fire’s backline — with the Windy City tourists getting into the passing lanes. And tip your cap toward Chicago keeper Kenneth Kronholm, who made save after save after save. As for the Fire offense, the Revolution defense had handled things pretty well: Nemanja Nikolic was already off the field, his goal-per-game streak kaput, and CJ Sapong had his bell rung and wasn’t looking too dangerous.
And when Gustavo Bou blazed over on his 85th minute free kick from 24 yards out, I opened my texts to BSJ soccer analyst Tom Benedetto and typed, “Looking like this one’s going to be a share (of points).”
Tom replied, “Yep.”
And then this happened:
Gustavo Bou with the late go-ahead goal! #NEvCHI pic.twitter.com/pl9cY46fWx
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) August 25, 2019