Everyone, from the highest team officials, to the players, to the skeptical media, was impressed by the crowd of 46,826 that attended the return of big league soccer to Giants Stadium last night.
However, after the shocking way the New York/New Jersey MetroStars lost their game, 1-0, to the New England Revolution, everyone, from the highest team officials, to the players, to the skeptical media, was wondering whether those people ever will come back.
The MetroStars, the descendants of the old North American Soccer League’s Cosmos, are 0-2 in their inaugural season of the fledgling MLS today because, with 12 seconds left in the game, Italian sweeper Nicola Caricola flubbed an attempt to clear a rebound and sent the ball into his own net for a devastating own-goal.
With the game looking like a scoreless draw and the MLS’ gimmicky, made-for-television, International Hockey League-style shootout looming, New England substitute Darren Sawatzky raced up the right side and fired a low shot at the Stars goal that goalkeeper Tony Meola went down to block. The rebound landed at the feet of Caricola, who was facing the goal. Caricola, a 12-year veteran of Italy’s Serie A, considered the world’s best soccer league, tried to clear the ball over the end line for a corner, but mis-hit it, sending it floating over the fallen Meola and agonizingly into the corner of the net.
“I tried to control it,” said Caricola. “But at the last moment, some forward touched me and the ball went into the net.
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The goal was the second of the three the MetroStars have surrendered this season to have gone in off Caricola.
“I feel bad . . . but this is soccer,” said Caricola, who bravely answered the same questions over and over again from the wave of media. “But the match was good, for the MetroStars and for the Revolution. I think the players were happy, I think the fans were happy. I think they will come back. We can do much better next time.
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They expect to have help in the form of additional players, as the team announced during the game it had signed Colombian forward Ruben Dario Hernandez and word spread through the press box that midfielder Tab Ramos’ Mexican League team, Tigres, was eliminated from that league’s playoffs yesterday, freeing him to join the MetroStars this week. Both Hernandez and Ramos are expected to be in the lineup next Saturday when the Stars host the Columbus Crew.
The crowd was the largest non-World Cup crowd for a soccer game at Giants Stadium since an exhibition game in 1983. The NASL folded following the 1984 season.
