This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
With a chance to even the match Thursday, New England's Saer Sene and Jerry Bengston both fought for the chance to take a stoppage-time penalty kick against Real Salt Lake.
That's because neither player is the Revolution's primary penalty kick taker.
"Lee Nguyen is our penalty kick taker," New England coach Jay Heaps said after the game. "We have contests and things like that and the players work on it. So in terms of that, Saer was taker last year. He is coming back to form and he has taken a few, obviously, in training. That's a bad one. Not a bad penalty kick, it's a bad spot to be in the 90th minute. It would have been good to have Lee in that spot."
Nguyen, however, was substituted out of the match earlier after picking up a yellow card.
"He was flirting with getting another one with a couple fouls and we were up 1-0," Heaps said.
That left Bengston and Sene to battle it out for the chance to be the game's hero Thursday night, after the referee whistled RSL defender Carlos Salcedo for a handball in the box.
"They were fighting about who is going to take it," RSL goalkeeper Nick Rimando said. " Sene wanted to take the ball from Bengtson and he didn't want to. I'm glad. It creates a little pressure on himself, taking the ball away from his teammate and you try to just stall them as much as you can."
The pressure proved to be too much for Sene, who telegraphed the kick and allowed Rimando to make the 19th penalty kick save of his career to preserve the road win for RSL.
• Aaron Falk
Twitter: @aaronfalk