The Revolution came to Crew Stadium with a chance to move into first with a win but left five points back and exhausted from their busy summer of SuperLiga, U.S. Open Cup and CONCACAF Champions League matches. Their 32nd game was a 4-0 loss Tuesday to Joe Public of Trinidad and Tobago that eliminated the Revolution from the Champions League tournament. Meanwhile, the Crew played their 27th match in all competitions on Saturday and was clearly the fresher squad.
"If you can't run you can't compete," New England coach Steve Nicol said. "We've traveled 20,000 miles the last three months. We played every fourth day. ... It's a physical impossibility."
Schmid agreed.
"Let's understand that New England is a team, as Stevie mentioned, that has played a lot of games and has guys injured. They're a quality team," the Crew coach said. "Our goal going into the game, our mantra for the last two days was to get into the game -- make it a 90-minute game, don't let New England off the hook. Don't let a tired team have a 45-minute game. We stuck to the gas pedal right from the start of the game.
"We were fortunate a bit that we got to play a tired team but there's also a thing that when you go into a game like that that you're supposed to win that it's difficult to accomplish. I was very proud of them because they came out and did the job."
The Crew pounced on the Revolution and received another brilliant effort from forward Guillermo Barros Schelotto. The 35-year-old maestro scored the first goal and assisted on the next two to continue his streak of contributing on Crew goals.
Over a four-game stretch, he had two goals and eight assists on the Crew's 10 goals. The run ended while was he resting on the bench and the Crew added their fourth goal, the second of the match by Jason Garey, in the 90th minute. Former Revolution midfielder Pat Noonan picked up his first Crew point on the play in his first appearance against his former club since being traded Aug. 6.
"They (New England) were worn down and the game was kind of over at that point but it was good to get out there and get a couple of minutes," Noonan said.
But the story continues to be Schelotto. The August MLS Player of the Month picked up where he left off. He scored the winning goal in the 39th minute, set up rookie defender Andy Iro's score in the 45th minute off a free kick and added another helper on Garey's goal in the 67th.
"Guillermo looks like he's 28 out there. He's everywhere," Iro said.
The Crew had a 27-4 shot advantage and had 13 of the total 14 shots on goal as the Revolution were unable to get anything going. Garey credited central midfielders Brian Carroll and Brad Evans with stifling the New England attack.
"We came out so hard, especially Brad and BC, the guys in the middle," Garey said. "They really didn't give New England a chance to get into the game at all. They were all over it. It was great."
The goal by Iro, a snap header from a Schelotto freekick, came at an opportune time and spelled the end for the Revolution.
"That gave us a good little boost into halftime and the third goal was the dagger," Iro said. "Again, good timely goals, a good team performance working hard.
"We knew that they'd be tired. We knew if we stepped on them early they would kind of tire. Luckily, we got the early goals that gave us the cushion and they tired toward the end."
The Crew knew New England might struggle but Noonan said that should not have affected how his team played.
"You still have to go out there and get results and we did that," he said. "Sure, they're tired but that's no excuse for us not to come out and play. We were all over them all night long and got a great result not only winning but putting the game away."
Schmid knows that despite stretching the lead ahead of the the Revolution, the final seven matches, including a rematch at New England on Sept. 27, will test the team.
"Obviously, you can tell I'm very proud of my team," he said. "Am I going to say we're the toast of the town and the best team ever? No, I'm not going to say that, but I think we can start talking about and thinking about that we want to win the league now. We want to win the Eastern Conference. It's not so much the playoffs, we've got a chance to do a little bit more, maybe we want to grab onto that thing called the Supporters' Shield.
"If we think we're there; we pat ourselves on the back, we're not going to do it. We've got to continue to keep our feet on the ground and do what we do which is work hard and make sure everybody fights for each other."
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