{"id":47242,"date":"2023-07-09T11:35:56","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T15:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/?p=47242"},"modified":"2023-07-09T11:35:56","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T15:35:56","slug":"latif-blessing-red-revs-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/07\/09\/latif-blessing-red-revs-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Latif Blessing Deservedly Sees Red in Highly Controversial Revolution Defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A chance of eight games unbeaten was there for the taking for the New England Revolution but <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/07\/07\/captain-carles-gil-absent-vs-redbulls\/\" target=\"_self\">they came up just short<\/a>. A lot of the post-match talk in New England is regarding the decision-making of the match officials. Amongst all of that, Latif Blessing was sent off in New York as his Revs career goes from bad to worse\u2026<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Latif Blessing is Sent Off in the Big Apple<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>Coping Without Carles<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The biggest questions coming into this game were regarding the absence of Revs captain Carles Gil. As well as <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/04\/25\/ben-sweat-joins-the-revs\/\" target=\"_self\">Ben Sweat<\/a> replacing Ryan Spaulding, there of course had to be another change to the XI that drew with FC Cincinnati last weekend. 18-year-old Esmir Bajraktarevic was the man to take Gil\u2019s spot and a system change ensued too.<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Arena was rather blas\u00e9 pre-match when discussing the Gil suspension and he kept up a similarly straight-talking vibe post-match. \u201cYour team is better when your best player is on the field, in any sport. So, we\u2019re not going to have the same quality when Carles isn\u2019t on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"HIGHLIGHTS: New York Red Bulls vs. New England Revolution | July 8, 2023\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ghmQWXXW3tw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He may not have started but <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/07\/06\/spfl-midfielder-harkes-joins-revs\/\" target=\"_self\">Ian Harkes<\/a> made his keenly awaited debut for the Revolution after joining from SPFL side Dundee United last week. The former D.C. United man certainly looked up to speed with it all but his performance will sadly be remembered for the Red Bulls\u2019 second goal.<\/p>\n<p>After <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2022\/10\/11\/exclusive-interview-matt-polster\/\" target=\"_self\">Matt Polster<\/a> gave the ball away, Wikelman Carmona saw his effort deflect off of Harkes on the way beyond the reaches of Djordje Petrovic. Here is Bruce Arena\u2019s reaction to what he saw from his latest signing, Ian \u201cdid real well. Unfortunately, he deflected that ball for their second goal, but he played really well. It was really encouraging to see.\u201d Harkes entered the game with 68 minutes on the clock, shortly after Latif Blessing saw red.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/07\/06\/spfl-midfielder-harkes-joins-revs\/\" target=\"_self\">Revolution Kick the Summer Signings Off with SPFL Midfielder<\/a><\/p>\n<h3><strong>A Tough Night for Referees- was the Latif Blessing Dismissal Correct?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Arena isn\u2019t one to pull any punches and that was evident after the full-time whistle when he spoke with the media. One quote of his went as follows, \u201cthat\u2019s the third time this year we\u2019ve had a goal taken away on a VAR interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It looked for intents and purposes that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NERevolution\/status\/1677852236871790594\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Andrew Farrell had equalised<\/a> for the Revolution once again at the death. His low effort from range hit the far post on its\u2019 way in to send the defender and his teammates into jubilation. This ecstasy was short-lived though as VAR intervened.<\/p>\n<p>Over to Coach Arena once again for his interpretation of it all. \u201cThe ball was deflected by a Red Bull player, so the goal should have been good. That\u2019s my opinion of it. They said Vrioni was interfering with the goalkeeper. I think with the Red Bull player deflecting the ball, the goal should be allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I mean, Latif Blessing isn&#39;t a dirty player. But he did just get his boot up to the guy&#39;s pelvic bone studs showing. I can live with that as red <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fVbGqwrixf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/fVbGqwrixf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sportsdoctormd\/status\/1677844743072391168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 9, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t the only decision of note by any means as, just moments after Frankie Amaya headed the hosts into the lead, midfielder Latif Blessing was given a straight red for a high boot on the goal scorer. Arena didn\u2019t agree with this one either but he was in the minority and there can be very few complaints about <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2023\/01\/04\/latif-blessing-lafc-to-new-england\/\" target=\"_self\">the Ghanaian<\/a>\u2019s dismissal. \u201cLatif\u2019s red was pretty soft. Obviously, when you see the game that referee had, nothing should surprise you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From one suspension to another as Gil\u2019s questionable yellow for diving is followed up by a very understandable red card being shown the way of Latif Blessing. It was a poor performance from the Revs so whilst there are debates to be had about the officiating, it just wasn\u2019t good enough either way.<\/p>\n<p>Featured image credit: Syndication- The Enquirer, July 1, 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A chance of eight games unbeaten was there for the taking for the New England Revolution but they came up just short. A lot of the post-match talk in New England is regarding the decision-making of the match officials. Amongst all of that, Latif Blessing was sent off in New York as his Revs career [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3891,"featured_media":47243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[4249,115,2895,3700,200,5573],"class_list":["post-47242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-revolution","category-redbulls","tag-brandon-bye","tag-bruce-arena","tag-carles-gil","tag-frankie-amaya","tag-red-bull-arena","tag-troy-lesesne"],"modified_by":"Jamie Rooke","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3891"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}