Fracas at Foxborough: Jermaine Jones, Felipe Martins, and the RBNY-Revs postgame bust-up

If you didn't switch off your TV in despair as soon as the final whistle in New England signaled the end of the New York Red Bulls' unbeaten start to MLS 2015, you may have noticed the players decided to continue the contest beyond the traditional boundary of time allocated for soccer matches.

Fisticuffs isn't quite the right word, but there was an extended bout of shoving and shouting after full-time, and MLS has helpfully provided highlights for those who missed it:

In a nutshell, Jermaine Jones was in a tizzy, a bunch of Red Bulls and Revs started pushing each other around, and perhaps the most serious moment of the altercation was when Sacha Kljestan appeared ready to take on Jay Heaps and his coaching staff.

But take a moment to applaud the hero of this brief moment in RBNY-Revolution history: Roy Miller. In a situation where no Red Bull could apparently spend more than three seconds in the company of Jermaine Jones without feeling the urge to punch someone, Miller put an arm around the sputtering, finger-pointing New England DP and calmed him down. He also managed to look dignified while wearing a RBNY beanie.

Despite Miller's intervention, entire teams can't slap at each other without a few people noticing, so there were questions from the media in the post-game interviews. Even after his soothing encounter with RBNY's senior left back, Jones was still in a mood to talk:

"...he said something in his language, but I played with some people from that country so I know some words. I told him, don’t do that, I love my kids, I love my wife and they have nothing to do on the pitch here."

We look forward to someone in the press corps determining whether JJ knows a lot of Portuguese or just the words that translate as awful things about wives and children.

Either way, Jones has pointed his finger at Felipe. And as RBNY's VP of Calm, Roy Miller, can attest, JJ has powerful fingers.

Felipe, it must be said, does have a special gift for getting under the skin of his opponents.

But if a little chit-chat was an excuse for players to cut loose on each other, Zinedine Zidane might not have got into quite so much bother when he responded with a head butt to Marco Materazzi's suggestion that he would prefer the French legend's sister to his shirt after the 2006 World Cup final.

The Red Bulls, for their part, have got their side of the story out. Sacha Kljestan described the events from his perspective:

"Postgame Jermaine Jones was being a little cheeky and wanted to be clever and talk a little bit of junk to Felipe and touch his face a little bit and I didn’t like that. But I love the reaction of our team, though. Everyone was over there defending Felipe and defending our colors."

Both teams' head coaches seem inclined to let the matter rest. Jesse Marsch is adding the incident to the stockpile of chips his Red Bulls have been toting on their shoulders since the season began:

"We’re going to tuck this one away and I think we’ll see them quite a bit down the road and we’ll be ready."

Jay Heaps saw nothing he hadn't seen before:

"...that stuff used to always happen."

And JJ appears simply to be hoping he has helped to stoke a rivalry that will one day emulate one of sports' most-storied grudge matches:

"You can see it the same as in baseball with Red Sox-Yankees. So maybe we have that with New York Red Bulls. I like that game."

We shall see, JJ. RBNY next meets the Revolution on July 11, at Red Bull Arena.