FRISCO, Texas -- Seventeen times during the 2005 season, New England Revolution forward Taylor Twellman found the net. New England's offense was the second-highest scoring team throughout the 32-game regular season, hitting for 55 goals. Twellman's efforts earned him Honda MLS MVP and Budweiser Golden Boot honors, while his team finished atop the Eastern Conference with a club-record 17-7-8 record.
But all of that meant nothing after they were held scoreless on Sunday afternoon in the MLS Cup Final, falling to the Los Angeles Galaxy by a 1-0 score at Pizza Hut Park thanks to an extra-time goal from Guillermo Ramirez.
In four playoff matches, the Revolution could only muster four goals. Twellman fared the worst, being shutout in the postseason as he struggled to even find quality chances. His strike-partner Pat Noonan and attacking midfielder Clint Dempsey did a little better, each notching a goal in the Revs' playoff run. But one of the most potent offensive sides in 2004 dried up at the worst time of the year, leading to their demise in Texas in the championship match.
Revolution head coach Steve Nicol wasn't just pointing the finger at his star forward, though, after the disheartening loss. He instead pointed out that the Revs' attack was usually stalled before it even got going.
"If you don't get service, you don't score goals," he said. "I guess the one thing we could say throughout the playoffs was our service to the front guys could have been a lot better. Consequently, had it been a lot better, I'm sure Taylor would have scored."
Twellman failed to provide any insight himself. He refused to speak to the media after the match.
But it's undeniable that New England's offensive struggles were team-wide, as they took only 11 shots over 120 minutes of action, compared to 24 shots for the Galaxy. To make matters worse, nine of the Revolution's efforts didn't even force a save from Los Angeles Galaxy goalkeeper Kevin Hartman, who was only severely tested nine minutes into the first extra-time period when he parried away a strong shot from substitute midfielder Jose Cancela.
The Revolution went 62 minutes before their first shot on goal, the second-longest drought to start an MLS Cup Final ever. The first was also by New England in 2002, when they didn't record a shot on target until three minutes into extra time in their first overtime loss to the Galaxy.
"It's very frustrating," Dempsey said. "We're a team that was able to score a lot of goals this season and I think we're not that difficult of a team to figure out what we're going to do. Teams play well against us and defenders played well to limit our chances."
Instrumental to limiting New England's chances was the Galaxy defense and midfield, which swarmed the Revolution's attacking threats, flooding the middle of the field and giving their opponents little space in which to operate.
"You've got to give credit to Tyrone Marshall and Ugo Ihemelu, for their great marking of Noonan and Twellman," said Galaxy head coach Steve Sampson, who led his team from a fourth-place finish in the regular season to their second title. "Certainly Paulo Nagamura did a great job on Dempsey in the midfield. I think we tried to tuck Cobi [Jones] in and Ned [Grabavoy] in, take away the space in the midfield and force them to play through [Michael] Parkhurst. I think that was effective for us."
Dempsey conceded that the clogged midfield and almost constant fouling -- 10 yellow cards were issued during the match -- disrupted his team's attempt to find any offensive continuity.
"If you look at the first 15-20 minutes of the game, there was just foul after foul after foul," he said. "It's a tough game to watch because it was hard to get anything going. I think that kind of hurt the game in terms of opening it up and creating more chances. You really never felt like you got into the flow."
Jonathan Nierman is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
MVP Pando scores: 
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