Atlas 0 – 1 New England Revolution

By: Alan | June 29th, 2009

Atlas lost to New England last night by the minimal margin of 1-0 and with the loss make their exit from the 2009 SuperLiga tournament. I was on hand to see the match and although Atlas didn’t manage to score a single goal in the tournament there was enough on display in Gillette Stadium last night for there to be hope.

Atlas’ played with a mixed team of starters and young players trying to win a position on the first team come the Apertura 09 tournament. The first half was evenly balanced with Atlas showing most of the initiative in the beginning but New England having the early goal opportunities. New England’s goal in the first half came as a counter attack in which they took advantage of an open left flank to score. This goal was the only one Atlas received in the entire tournament, but unfortunately it was the one that took them out of it.

The second half was all Atlas all the time. Atlas managed to rattle the framework on three separate occasions and force a one handed save from Revs goal keeper Reis. The youngsters seemed eager to play but despite their best efforts could not put the ball in the back of the net. There was also some friendly and some not-so-friendly squabbling amongst both sides, with el Pollo receiving a yellow card for being a bit too vocal with the ref and Gerardo Espinoza receiving a bit of a lax direct red card.

Miguel Zepeda did see 20 minutes of game play but showed nothing spectacular. Most of Atlas’ offensive movements went through Hebert Efraín Alférez and el Pollo, who can play well when he’s not out fighting with anyone within 5 meters of him.

At the end of the game Hugo Ayala stayed to sign autographs for the faithful who were in New England representing far and wide.

Although Atlas made an early exit from the tournament, all isn’t bad, as keeper Francisco Canales put it, “We’d be worried if we hadn’t created a single goal scoring opportunity, we generated a lot of chances but we lacked the luck to score on a couple of attacking plays we had.” Largely I agree, Atlas did have a lot of plays that could have resulted in goals, and there were solid performances by the Atlas regulars like el Pollo, Ayala, and Pacheco.