It took about 82 minutes, but DC United was able to take the lead off a late Chris Pontius goal to go on to win 2-1 over the New England Revolution in Gillette Stadium. In what was widely considered to be a sloppy game, both teams had many chances to grab a second after two early first half goals. This was a match United needed to win, and they were able to do it. A few years ago, this match would have been a draw or worse. This club has definitely improved over the span of a few years.
The first half started out strongly for DC. They were able to pressure early until José Moreno scored for New England in the sixth minute, and the Black and Red found themselves down early. Matt Reis showed himself to still be one of the best keepers in the league, coming up with a few key saves to keep the Revolution on top, but he couldn’t do it forever. Maicon Santos tied it up early on with a header off a “bicycle pass” from Dwayne De Rosario. The opportunities kept coming for the Black and Red, and I honestly thought we’d see three or four goals out of both teams before the night was finished.
But those third and fourth goals never came. In fact, the score remained 1-1 until the 82nd minute when Pontius showed his magic and scored his first goal after his late season injury last year. Hopefully there are many more to come from the midfielder. Also I have to give props to Ben Olsen for subbing in Pontius. It always looks good for a coach when their substitutes score goals. What was really encouraging was the pressure by DC. Yeah, their overall play wasn’t the cleanest, but the attacking core got the job done. In the first half, anyone could easily say “the field was slanted in DC’s favor” (from the words of the New England announcers). At one point, DC United had eight corner kicks in the first half alone.
I was bummed to not see Branko Boskovic in the match. After what I thought was a pretty good performance against Seattle, we’d definitely see him play more minutes in this match right? Nope. Maybe this had to do with another injury to Dejan Jakovic that required coach Ben Olsen to sub in Chris Korb. Hopefully the Jakovic injury isn’t serious.
Bottom line from this match: we needed those three points. DC has now gone four matches without losing going back to the March 18th match against LA. I was almost afraid we had inherited the New York Red Bulls disease (finishing almost every match with a draw), but luckily United was able to pull the win out at the end. This Wednesday, DC will come back home to face off against the expansion team Montreal Impact. This is an excellent chance to grab another win.
(image courtesy of Getty Images)
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