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The Revs just didn't have enough team to win the cup this year.. (Photo credit: Joyce Furia) |
To me, it was neither surprising, nor tragic.
This year's Revolution team overachieved a bit. Sure, they were essentially the same guys who got to MLS Cup last year, but management never replaced Clint Dempsey, a goal scorer and creative spark. Given that this was the same team minus an impact player, making it to the ultimate match was a real accomplishment, but when the ABC match commentators mentioned taking an informal poll of coaches around the league about who would win MLS Cup and receiving the uniform response that Houston was the better team, I couldn't even rouse the normal feelings of righteous indignation.
I'm glad Houston went into the match without a Designated Player (DP) on their roster too, so there's no confusion about what really makes a quality MLS side. DPs can help (e.g. Cuatemhoc Blanco) or they can hurt (e.g. Paulo Wanchope, Denilson, Claudio Reyna). Players don't win games. Teams do.
In the end, the Revolution just didn't have enough team to win. They have come to rely on Ralston, who, at 33, led the league in assists. The ironman midfielder became the de facto replacement for Dempsey when he moved into the middle of the park late in the season, and this was after Andy Dorman, once spoken of as the best attacking mid in MLS, fell so far out of form that he spent the last third of the season cultivating hemorrhoids on the bench.
When Ralston pulled up with a calf strain on Sunday, Dorman hardly seemed the solution that he once would have been, and there was simply no one else on the bench who was going to come in and make a difference, not because the Revolution were suffering with a raft of injuries, but because they failed to stock their roster with enough talent between MLS Cup 2006 and MLS Cup 2007.
We can't fault Steve Nicol and his staff for failing to field a winner. The 2007 Revolution won plenty of games. They just didn't win the big one. Again.
Too much is going to happen in the offseason to get a clear picture of whether MLS Cup 2008 will be any kinder to the hometown team. There will be an expansion draft that will likely rob the team of at least one starter. Dorman's contract is up for renegotiation. And of course, the Revs will have another winter to think about bringing in a DP or at least adding talent through discovery and/or trade.
I'll leave speculation for later. Right now I'm just going to bask in the vaguely satisfying disappointment of another MLS Cup lost. I enjoyed 2007 right up to the last 15 or 16 minutes. After all, at least our team isn't named after an energy drink.
Emlyn Lewis can be reached at
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