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Chivas USA rolls to 3-0 romp over New England

AlejandroMoreno (ISIPhotos.com)

By JONATHAN VERA

CARSON, Calif. — Chivas USA won its second straight match after goals from Nick LaBrocca, Marcos Mandaini, and Alejandro Moreno helped the 'Rojiblancos' post an emphatic 3-0 victory against New England at Home Depot Center on Saturday night.

The victory was Chivas USA’s best performance of the season. The passing was crisp, the defense shut down Shalrie Joseph and Benny Feilhaber, and most importantly, they were able to execute the final touches.

“You’ve been here since the first game where we talked about not being aggressive enough and not being aggressive in the attacking third” explained Chivas Head Coach Robin Fraser. “And it’s something that we worked on tirelessly for a number of weeks. We’ve been improving and creating more and more chances.”

“It was definitely a game where I thought a lot of things were coming together for us.”

The mood wasn’t as jubilant in the visitor’s locker room, where Coach Steve Nicol looked perplexed after witnessing his team’s utter demise despite starting the match off well.

“The first 15-20 minutes we had decent bits of play,” said Nicol. “We had some decent balls in the box. After that, we were just second best. We didn’t look sharp, we looked sluggish. The longer the game went on, the more sluggish we looked.”

The sluggishness caused bewilderment for the defense that allowed shots to enter that should have never been allowed.

“We defended poorly, the two goals in the first half… we had defenders there who didn’t read [it properly] and made bad decisions. And when you do that, you lose games,” added Nicol.

In the 58th minute, while the Goats were on the attack, the Revolution defense experienced a cerebral meltdown when a poorly executed back-pass found its way to Moreno and into net.

“That’s my kind of goal, actually,” Moreno said. “Once the ball was played back to the defender I turned on. I was able to see the whole play through and he took a heavy touch and I was about to take advantage of it. In order to score those goals you got to be there and see the play.”

It was a bit of a role change in tonight performance for Moreno. Usually the Venezuelan takes on the selfless responsibilities of handling all the dirty work (fighting and scrapping for balls) and doing anything he can to secure a victory. But on Saturday night the man of the match recorded two assists and one goal.  

“It’s not about him, not about his glory; he could care less about that. And tonight was just another game where he did just a lot of the dirty work, and ended up in some good spots and obviously was very productive,” commented Fraser on his forward.

The Red-and-White dominated every aspect of the game. And though this should a message to the league (and their next three opponents: Real Salt Lake, New York, and Galaxy) that Chivas USA is no pushover, the Rojiblancos could care less.

“We don’t care about making a statement to the league. We validate our performances to ourselves. We only answer to ourselves,” said Moreno.

Comments

  1. It faked out the ref on one…awful yellow numbers though. Chivas looked like NE and New England looked like the GAlaxy at the HDC…ridiculous

    Reply
  2. Hey! I hope you’re not dissing the blue Corona jersey. I think it looks great. Anyway, if NE is that easy to confuse then they deserve to get smoked.

    Reply
  3. So is Chivas’ new tactic to confuse visiting teams by wearing jerseys that closely resemble the visitors’ home colors?

    Reply

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