Upon further review, Burke goal extends winning streak
CHESTER » Cory Burke has turned himself into one of the most indispensable assets in the Philadelphia Union’s arsenal by doing one of the most elemental things in the game of soccer.
Saturday night, he meshed that with an even more basic tenet of the game: Not stopping a play until the whistle has blown.
And as a result, the Union have a bona fide winning streak.
Burke’s goal was ruled onside by video review, the only marker in a 1-0 victory for the streaking Union against the New England Revolution Saturday night at Talen Energy Stadium.
In the 53rd minute, Haris Medunjanin played a long ball to Burke, who held his run onside a few yards beyond the midfield stripe. A flag from assistant referee Peter Manikowski went up for offside late, after Burke had his first touch. Referee Drew Fischer allowed play to continue, and Burke took several touches to round goalkeeper Matt Turner and deposit the goal, bringing video review into the equation for a goal-scoring play.
Burke said he took a quick glance to the sideline but didn’t see the flag, so he zeroed in on trying to complete the play, oblivious to the fact that it might not count.
“I see the ball played and I know all I have to do is get the ball and try to score,” Burke said. “One thing is on my mind there and that’s to try and score the goal.”
Fischer went to the monitor to see if Burke had checked his run and quickly awarded the goal.
“It was my discretion,” Fischer said via MLS’s pool reporting system. “The protocol suggests that we allow play to continue until play is resolved, in this case in a goal.”
“You hear from the age of five, ‘play to the whistle,’” manager Jim Curtin said. “So Credit to Cory, he was the only one that kind of kept going, it seemed in the whole stadium, maybe.
“It was a big goal. It won us a game.”
Even Brad Friedel, the Revs coach, was in accord with the decision.
“The ref said he didn’t blow his whistle, which he did not,” Friedel said. “The referee on that occasion got the play absolutely correct. It’s a difficult one because as the player hits it, the linesman puts his flag up. When he puts his flag up, all the players stop, including all their players except for Burke. To the letter of the law, it’s a goal, but it’s a hard one to take.”
“I didn’t really know what was going on,” Union captain Alejandro Bedoya said. “I thought the ref did a good job of letting the play go through and obviously, that’s what VAR is for. If I was New England I’d be pissed off, but I think it worked how it should work. I’ve seen the clip and he was clearly onside.”
Burke made the most of the celebration, revealing an undershirt that gave tribute to “Miss Anne Marie Hanland,” the late mother of his former Rivoli United teammate Kenny Lee, whose funeral was today in Jamaica. It warranted a yellow card, part of a mini kerfuffle between Medunjanin and Friedel at the touchline that both said afterward was more smoke than fire. But Medunjanin riled up the crowd in what Curtin called, “a WWF moment” of chaos to bring an otherwise dead game to life.
“Sometimes there are some difficult games and sometimes you need to show the heart,” Medunjanin said. “It cannot be always pretty soccer, like we used to do, especially against New York. But sometimes they came today, they didn’t want to play soccer, they just wanted to follow us all over the pitch. I was a little bit mad because (Friedel) was talking too much that we were like a bad midfield and everything, and that’s why I reacted to him. It was a little bit emotional, but I’m always trying to win and especially to involve the crowd, too.”
The goal is Burke’s seventh in seven MLS starts and 10th in all competitions. The Union have won all seven of Burke’s starts.
The win is the Union’s third in a row in MLS and fourth straight in all competitions. It’s the third win of the season against the Revs
(7-10-8, 29 points) and second in three weeks. The Union (11-11-3,
36 points) solidified their grasp on fifth place in the East.
The game sprang to life after the goal. Twice, Andre Blake was called to make outstanding saves to keep the Union lead. He fired out a hand in the 70th minute to repel a Christian Penilla shot that wriggled through a forest of legs from the left channel. Blake made another sensational save in the 80th when Juan Agudelo hit a header against the grain, Blake batting it away at the last moment.
“Sometimes like today, you saw they were man-marking us all over the pitch so some other guys had to step up,” Medunjanin said. “Dre did that today. … Dre was amazing today and he saved us a couple of times. But that’s why we have the best goalkeeper in our squad.”
Medunjanin played the hero on a corner kick in the 67th minute that Revs defender Brandon Bye headed goalward. But Medunjanin was stationed on the near post to nudge it to safety.
That made the difference in a game that the Union looked set to disappoint in. But they didn’t, yet another sign of growth.
“These are the types of games where maybe in the past we’ve had letdowns and didn’t close things out,” Curtin said. “We’ve been a team, and you can go through the date on this and I don’t want to jinx things on this, but when we’re getting a lead, we’re closing out games. When we take a lead, it’s tough for teams to break us down. It helps to have Andre Blake behind you, but I think it shows some growth as an organization.”