E-Mail This Article to a Friend Surviving the soccer tripleheader at Gillette Stadium BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. I didn’t see all three games at the futball extravaganza last Saturday in Foxborough. (And for those of you who have little to no interest in soccer in the first place, detailing two games instead of three is probably that much better.)

Sitting through three full 90-minute soccer games on a sunny 80-degree afternoon would take extraordinary passion for the game, and that is something that I admittedly lack. I don’t think that I would even subject myself to sitting through three consecutive baseball or football games, and those are the sports that I find most appealing. In fact, when it comes to my overall interest in soccer, it still manages to fall behind the big four American sports, and it may even be relegated to a position behind golf and tennis as well, depending on the situation. Nonetheless, I enjoy soccer enough to have gone in with three other blokes on a pair of season tickets for the New England Revolution the past two years — primarily for the opportunity to visit Gillette on a regular basis, given the difficulty of securing Patriots’ tickets — and Saturday’s Revolution-MetroStars contest was sandwiched between two CONCACAF Gold Cup matches, the latter of which included the US National team.

CONCACAF stands for Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, and this summer’s Gold Cup tournament is kind of an off-year World Cup. The tourney that kicked off in Foxborough this past weekend and continues this week is a kind of regional bracket for a larger worldwide tournament, and this particular 12-team grouping includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Canada, the US, Cuba, Honduras, Jamaica, Guatemala, Martinique, Mexico, and, for some reason, the South American countries Colombia and Brazil. Miami and Mexico are also hosting regional play, with the winner of the tournament being crowned on July 27 in Mexico City. Gillette Stadium will play host to four early-round games and two quarterfinals, and it is no surprise that the US team was placed in this bracket, given the national team’s past success at the old Foxboro Stadium, and the newness of the venue. What the US team would actually gain by winning the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament is difficult for me to understand, given that the World Cup is still three years away, and much, much more qualifying will be necessary before the Americans clinch a spot in the 32-team field for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

Anyway, back to Saturday. The opening game of the afternoon was a match between Costa Rica and Canada, with the Costa Ricans favored by virtue of their recent success in the past two World Cups, while Canada came into the game ranked 78th in the world by FIFA.

Canada upset the Costa Ricans, 1-0, but I wasn’t there, and therefore I can’t tell you one iota what happened. So let’s move on, shall we?

The third-place Revolution came into their MLS game against the first-place MetroStars with a 5-3-5 record, and had the advantage from the get-go, given the fact that New York–New Jersey was missing two of its best players to the US national team that would play in the nightcap against El Salvador, another who was at the FIFA World Championships, and six others who were out with injuries or red-card suspensions. That seemed to bode well for the home team, and the Revs were off and running, scoring a pair of first-half goals by phenom Taylor Twellman and veteran Joe-Max Moore. Early in the second half, Pat (not Danny) Noonan scored his first MLS goal by being the ball, giving New England the momentum and a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 advantage.

NFL players often spout clichés about playing for the full 60 minutes, which means you can’t let up during any of the game’s four 15-minute periods. The good news was that the Revolution football players played well for the full 60 minutes; the bad news was that American football is 60 minutes long, and the football recognized by the rest of the world, and being played on this day, lasts a full 90 minutes. The Revolution players, perhaps dazzled by the Patriots’ world-championship banner hanging in the southeast corner of the stadium, decided to stop playing after the 60-minute mark, just as any American footballer would. Problem was, 30 minutes remained in regulation, and the MetroStars would soon capitalize.

Blowing a 3-0 lead in soccer is akin to blowing a 10-run lead in baseball or a 28-point lead in American football. Blowing a 3-0 lead in soccer in just seven minutes of play is simply preposterous and mind-boggling, but that’s what the Revs managed to do, beginning in the 66th minute when someone named John Wolyniec got NY-NJ on the board. The next Stars’ goal was as laughable as it was absurd for Revs fans, as New England defender Daouda Kante — looking as helpless at stopping the ball as Rocky Balboa did chasing the live chicken early in Rocky II — couldn’t get control of the ball in front of Revs goalkeeper Adin Brown. As desperation enveloped the hapless and momentarily uncoordinated Kante, he did what some might imagine to be the smart thing: he lightly kicked the ball back to Brown in order to secure possession. Brown, however, with 180 degrees of geometric area in which to kick and clear the ball, chose to wind up and kick it straight ahead. Straight ahead, unfortunately, was where Kante’s lithe body stood, and the ball bounced off the startled defender’s noggin and back into the Revolution goal. It was now 3-2, Revolution.

Red Sox fans know the feeling of dread that occurs when Pedro Martinez leaves a game with a one-run lead, or when the Sox bullpen takes over in a tie game against the Yankees. The most appropriate term would be "impending doom." And the crowd rooting on the Revolution on this day knew doom when they saw and felt it, and the MetroStars’ tying goal — like the impending tying or winning run in the baseball example listed above — was merely a formality at this point. You didn’t know when it was coming; you just knew for damn sure that it was coming. With 17 minutes left and the momentum clearly switched, that tying goal was as expected as heartbreak in the Bronx is for Sox fans.

And come it did, just three minutes later. Except for the small NY-NJ contingent of fans in the north end zone, the stadium was deathly quiet when Ricardo Clark tallied the Stars’ third goal. Only by a miracle in the final 14 minutes of regulation and 10 minutes of overtime did the Revolution avoid an ignominious defeat, even surviving two point-blank shots at the end of the second OT that Brown somehow managed to stop.

When the dust had settled, a sure three points for New England — which would have vaulted it into second place in the MLS’s Eastern Conference just a point behind NY-NJ — instead resulted in a pick-up of just one point, and a continued four-point deficit in the standings. All the goodwill established by the Revs in the first 65 minutes of play was cancelled out by a lethargic final 35 minutes, resulting in an uncharacteristic hail of boos raining down from the fandom.

Luckily, the Revs fans had only 20 minutes to stew before the day’s marquee match — the US vs. El Salvador — was slated to begin. Late in the Revs game, a couple of patriotic El Salvadorans began waving their country’s blue-and-white flag in the southwest corner of the stadium, setting off a chain reaction of flag-waving fervor among the assembled gathering of 33,652. Stunned Americans were amazed to see the sheer number of El Salvadoran soccer zealots on hand to root on their national team, and it was a vocal and frenzied bunch at that. The passionate El Salvadoran contingent seemed to rival in number the supporters backing the US team, which was a remarkable turn of events for an international match staged on American soil.

The whole atmosphere for the US-El Salvador game was completely different from the Revs-MetroStars game, and nationalism and patriotic zest dominated the festivities. Whereas the earlier crowd could best be called "interested" and "enthusiastic," the Gold Cup crowd could easily be defined as "frenzied" and "possessed." It had what was as close to a World Cup flavor as one will find on these shores.

Fortunately for the US team, ranked ninth in the world after its quarterfinal appearance in La Copa Mundial in Korea last summer, its skill level was evident from the onset, and while the game remained scoreless until Eddie Morris scored in the 28th minute, the Americans had dominated the action. From that point on, the US dug in, and the El Salvador fans were relegated to lacrosse-type cheering — that is, taking great pleasure in their team’s merely gaining possession and advancing the ball. And when Brian McBride scored in the 76th minute to secure the 2-0 victory, the once-vocal blue-and-white-outfitted delegation was heading to the exits in droves. The American fans, clearly outnumbered in voice if not in numbers, seemed content with their team’s opening-game performance against a pesky yet overmatched opponent.

Nonetheless, it’s possible that these fans of American soccer could not help but shrug in spite of the US’s win, knowing full well that we have a long way to go before we get as passionate about this sport as soccer fans from around the world get about their teams. That’s just the way it is, and the burgeoning youth soccer movement is unlikely to change that, since folks don’t gradually become soccer-mad; they’re raised that way.

Still, it wasn’t a bad day to spend at sunny Gillette Stadium, even though most Revs fans headed for the parking lot cursing their beloved MLS team and quietly wishing that they could get as much out of a soccer match as the El Salvadoran fans got out of their team’s shutout loss.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com