{"id":28039,"date":"2014-09-22T16:42:51","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T20:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28039"},"modified":"2014-09-22T16:43:33","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T20:43:33","slug":"technically-speaking-clbvne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28039","title":{"rendered":"Technically Speaking: #CLBvNE"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The Revolution put in a good effort on Saturday, but the Crew was simply\u00a0the better team in both halves, and deserved the 1-0 victory. In addition, the facts that they were playing at home (big professional axiom: \u201cwin at home\u201d) and were more desperate than the Revs for a win (Crew was fifth in the standings, the Revs third) had to give them more of a sense of urgency.\u00a0Columbus would not have been happy with a tie \u2013 a result that would not have been surprising, especially considering Charlie Davies\u2019 very near miss in the 85th minute.<\/p>\n

In the first half, both teams had good scoring chances, with New England barely missing in the 15th and 19th minutes on shots by Lee Nguyen and Diego Fagundez. The Crew had good chances in the 13th and 34th minutes when Aaron Schoenfeld came close, and even better chances in the 29th and 38th minutes with Eric Gehrig\u2019s headers, the first of which was stopped by a great Bobby Shuttleworth save and the second by the post. The Crew\u2019s 64% to 36% ball possession advantage was a fairly accurate picture of the way the half went.<\/p>\n

The second half began with the entrance of Jermaine Jones into the game, replacing Daigo Kobayashi. The potential significance of this change was negated by the Crew\u2019s high level of energy at the start of the half, resulting in Federico Higuain\u2019s game winning goal, scored off a free kick in the 48th minute after Ethan Finlay was fouled by Darrius Barnes.<\/p>\n

The play of the Crew midfielders (Higuain, Will Trapp\u00a0and Tony Tchani) was perhaps the determining influence on the game\u2019s outcome. They were a bit better, in this game, than the trio of Caldwell, Nguyen, and Kobayashi\/Jones. Jones\u2019 entrance in the second half did not end up making the hoped for difference, and the Revs should be concerned about his behavior, as his confrontational stance toward the referees makes it easy to see why he has the reputation of being a red card in the making.<\/p>\n

I was especially impressed with the play of Crew midfielder Tony Tchani. His style reminded me of the great Gunter Netzer, the German national team midfielder in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s, who used occasionally to run full speed with the ball, shoulder-length hair flowing in the breeze, from penalty area to penalty area. Tchani didn\u2019t do that, but his combination of strong penetrating runs with the ball and nice play-making made him a potent force against the Revs.<\/p>\n

Now about shooting (yes, again). In this game, what comes to mind most vividly is Jermaine Jones\u2019 shot in the 64th minute. He was served a ball perfectly by Lee Nguyen that should easily have resulted in a hard shot on target. Given Jones\u2019s inside-of-the-toe technique, however, he shot over the bar, much as Kelyn Rowe did last week in the Montreal game (a shot made from well within the penalty area).<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the lesson? With the shooting technique Revs players are currently adopting, their shots, unless struck perfectly, can go anywhere, most likely over the bar. When well-struck, I admit that the ball can be on target with a lot of movement on it, but it is very difficult to shoot on target consistently using this method.<\/p>\n

Striking the ball with the inside of the big toe causes two major problems, and the first is that there is almost no margin for error. If the ball is slightly misstruck the shooter will have little idea where it will go. On the other hand, striking the ball properly with the instep (with the proper body behavior) will keep the ball much more consistently on target. Even if slightly mishit, the instep drive can stay on frame, just swerving to the corners. In other words, proper instep shooting gives the shooter a much larger margin for error.<\/p>\n

The main job of a shooter, especially when shooting in the run of play and from outside the penalty area, is to get the ball on target. He should not be aiming for the corners of the goal. When he does, he is off-target too often, plus he cuts down the chances for a goal resulting from a deflection.<\/p>\n

Shooting with the inside of the big toe also makes it very difficult to follow the shot. In fact, I have never seen a Rev player do this. They shoot, stop (with legs usually crossed), and look to see where the ball is going, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the ball could possibly rebound directly to them for an easy push-in if they had followed their shot. Admittedly, not many goals are scored this way, but, when they are, they\u2019re magical.<\/p>\n

The KC game should be great. I enjoy watching a Peter-Vermes-coached team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our resident coach and former pro Rick Sewall gives his take on Saturday’s match between the Revs and Crew. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":28040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Higuain-1.png?fit=485%2C259","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28039"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28039"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28044,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28039\/revisions\/28044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}