Diver Down

Ouch. The sting of my 1-5 showing on the predictions is softened a bit by Nick only going 2-4, but both of us technically got the Fire-Crew game right. And the Chivas match right up until the end.

[I'm going to cross-post the soccer entries over on that site for now, although I might eventually develop a slightly different "voice" for over there. Plus, I wouldn't even say we're in beta yet at SCT, so I've got a bigger audience here, for whatever that's worth.]

Anyway, the Fire were undone by a pretty terrible penalty call. Now that MLS is in the practice of ruling that certain goals shouldn't have counted -- see the passive offside call on Youri Djorkaeff's bomb in Week 1 -- maybe Joe Machnik will publicly smack Erich Simmons down for not understanding that when a small object runs into a larger object, the small object is going to bounce off it and fall down.

You could try to make the same case for the Kansas City - New England match, where Josh Wolff earned a PK that was stopped by Matt Reis, but having watched Josh Wolff over the years, he's actually pretty good at diving, as oxymoronic as that sounds. The New England defender -- I think it was Michael Parkhurst -- clearly had a handful of jersey, and that's a foul, plain and simple. Did he have enough to put Wolff on the ground? That's where the gray area lies. Somebody is going to be unhappy with that call either way, but the call wasn't wrong, per se. I guess the semantic distinction is that a rule was broken, but the question it rose to the level of a foul.

More important in that match was New England's general impotence all over the field. One goal in three matches so far, and lots and lots of bad passes. Despite a better record, I think the Revs have more work to do in preparation for their home opener in two weeks with Chicago.