Metro dumps blue team out of Open Cup, 1:0
June 14, 2017
The Open Cup is a strange narrative. Feel free to flip as needed: it's very important, it's pointless, unless you win it; we should play the first team, we should give bench players a chance; we have to care, we could care less. Tonight, we clearly have to take the former half of the above options, but the margin was so thin, we could have easily ended up with the latter.
So: the Open Cup is important, the first team should play (and mostly did, even Aurelien Collin making his return!), and we care. Oh, do we care, especially since the opponent was the blue team from across the river. So, the dominance continued with the 1:0 win...
On that dominance: on the scoreboard, perhaps, but not on the field. Not after a terrible first half which saw the Metro midfield being outrun by its supposedly inferior neighbors. The woodwork behind Ryan Meara (who was making a rare start) was hit three times, two of them on a single shot that somehow did not go in. Metro could do very little, as every pass ended in no-man's land.
And then, at half, two subs happened. The blue team was forced to take off injured midfield leader Maxi Moralez; Metro replaced Mike Grella with Daniel Royer. The field began to tilt the other way. It was now Metro with absolute control, slicing through the blue team, rendering them impotent.
The lone goal came in the 67th. Bradley Wright-Phillips pounced on a ball and brought it into the box from the left side. His shot was saved by Sean Johnson, but the ball rebounded to Royer. The Austrian took it out of the air and sent it into the net, past a helpless defender and the reeling Johnson.
That was all Metro needed, easily shutting down the supposedly vaunted attack. So, tonight in the Open Cup, the narrative is positive.
Good thing we were on the right side on the margin.
Lineup: Meara, Long, Collin, Perrinelle, Zizzo, Adams, Martins, Kljestan, Grella, Muyl, Wright-Phillips. Subs: Royer, Davis, Veron.
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