Game 8: Whitecaps @ FIRE Saturday 5/7 - 7.30PM

That includes stretches and maybe a meeting or two. That said, the last practice I saw was awful. DlC interrupting a scrimmage to chastise Anibaba a time or two, stopping the scrimmage multiple times to talk to players, basically looked like he was panicking a bit. A coach should watch a scrimmage and take notes, but let the kids play.

There's obviously some pressure on. I've never seen him interrupt a scrimmage like that before. That said, I think Anibaba (and the team) has looked better the last two games so go figure.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

We are basically a quarter of the season in now. It's starting to look like this could be the worst Fire team ever, no? Seven points in eight games. That would be relegation territory if we had such a thing.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

I disagree with this pretty much wholeheartedly. 2004 was much worse. 2010 was much worse.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

Through 8 games, we were better in both seasons. 10 points in 2004 and 9 points last year. 7 points this year. The story of this year is yet to be written fully, but we are off to our poorest start since they did away with the shoot out and its not exactly like we are seeing signs of life. And, our schedule to date has not been easy but has not been daunting either. The only top team we have played so far is LA and that wasn't really LA with all of the missing players they had that week.

I hope we turn things around, but we are off to a start that is comparable to our worst seasons (statistically we are off to a slower start than both 2004 and 2010) so there you have it.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

I didn't think the ref was too bad. He was kind enough to not give a deserved red card to us in the 4th minute.

 

Performance enhancers.

 

It was just a matter of time.

 

Anibaba is getting better each game...I just hope he doesn't get too comfortable at RB, and is able to make the adjustment quickly to CB when the time comes...also, how is DlC working with KWS?

Oduro and Gaston are both forwards that have been jammed into the midfield...I'm sure Denis was looking on thinking, whoa, this guy is good.


DlC has had 38 games so far...and 10 of those were wins...not too shabby?

 

I had the pleasure of watching this one at home last night and...

I saw two expansion teams playing last night. Who knew the Fire were an expansion team.

Felt bad for Chavez on the shot that hit the post, seriously unlucky.
Oduro's blunder on what should have been the 1st goal of many for the Fire is the exact reason why Dynamo had no issues with swapping him for Carr. His inability to finish that shot alone would make me drop him from the first XI.

Anibaba looked good because they took advantage of an obvious mis match. One of the few things they got right.

When will we remove Errol Flynn from goal? Pathetic is too kind a word.

Look, this team was brought to us by DLC & Frank and although we haven't reached the 10 match mark and despite the fact I actually saw a few good things last night, I'm not feeling good about this side. The bottom line is you gotta finish and especially when they're easy. Last night should have been a Fire blow out. I guess this team really needs to be up a man to score goals. No more excuses!!!!

The Ref was fine last night and wasn't the problem by any stretch of the imagination. The poor team we had on the field IS the problem. We have two primary players for our scoring punch and other teams have figured it out. We've got problems unless the new signing is actually as good as they claim.

We have the Bitches of Montreal next? They've got a 19 yr old who's gonna cause our back line a whole lot of problems.

Where's Corey Gibbs?

Fonsos

 

Well I guess the technical staff was right to sign another forward.

 

Oduro looks like the ball sticks to him and he can make runs with it. Maybe stick him at CAM with tha 'Guyans and Nazarith ahead.

 

yeah i have noticed the same thing - its one thing that they aren't scoring off set pieces, but they aren't even threatening to score off them. the short corners are even worse - possession is lost before the ball is sent into the box (which is headed out by a defenseman anyway)

half of pappas corner takes dont even make it past the first defender

 

I'm no Oduro apologist but as of now, he is the most dangerous Fire attacker in a Patrick Nyarko kind of way. Unfortunately he needs to be on the field if Nyarko isn't healthy.

Chaves is in a slump. Perhaps he is trying to do too much.

Puerari had one or two misses when he should have scored, was benched, returned, but placed at midfield.

Pappa wishes he was a forward although he did make more passes to his teammates more than usual last night so perhaps he got the memo that this is a team game.

I like Paladini. I think he is an improvement over Pause. However, he gave away at least 3 balls near his own box. A better team (really any team other than the Whitecaps) would have capitalized.

Here's what I don't get. The midfield. Ristic: He starts the season opener, gets hurt, gets healthy, then gets back on the field months later. Bone doesn't make the bench for the first several games and then starts. Husidic (same, but then starts and is benched).

At least DLC is consistent with that.

 

I semi-agree with you with Oduro, too bad he can't score in a whorehouse in a patrick nyarko way.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

Then go back and read my post-game comments this season. There hasn't been much for Fire fans to bitch about. I've pointed out that the refs have been letting teams get away which playing "hack a Fire" in midfield to disrupt what little flow we've generated there but, as I've also pointed out, at least they've done so consistently this year and so it's up to the Fire to grow a pair and adjust to that. Last night was no different although the ref's decisions about what was cardable or not were seriously flawed, although he did us a favor late in the game by letting Husidic stay on the field and not giving him a second yellow.

Of course, USSF refs suck and that hasn't changed a bit over the past 14 years. Lack of consistency, lack of knowledge of the rules, lack of positioning leading to crappy calls/non-calls, etc., the list goes on, it's all still there to an unacceptable degree and shame on USSF for letting this fester - and then having the chutzpah to whine when our refs don't get plum international assignments! This is partly (but not entirely) why we're seeing a rash of godawful injuries this year and why everyone is complaining about the players jawing at the refs each game. The players have lost respect for the refs -and rightly so. So we get the "street justice" and jawboning that are simply adding to the poor officiating and wrecking too many games (not to mention possibly a few playing careers.

And to head off your strawman, I don't like the whacking and the whining and I'm not excusing it. I wish there were more fines and suspensions for that crap - and yes, against Fire players if they do it. I'm just not surprised by it and complaining about only the players and not the referees misses a good portion of the problem and will do much to hamper any attempt to fix the problem rather just putting a band-aid on it and hoping it will go away.

Except I never said the ref cost us the game, did I?

Well, did I? Show me where I said that or apologize and STFU.

Unlike most homers, when I say "the ref was a piece of shit", that is not synonymous with "His calls were against us". I have consistently called out shitty reffing that has actually worked to our benefit. Just because a bad call/non-call went in the Fire's favor doesn't make it any less shitty. I'll take it because it balances out all the crappy calls/non-calls that don't go our way - but it's still bad officiating.

Anyway, nice effort but you fail on execution.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

Yeah, I forgot about that bad decision. Add that to my answer to Mike.

 

A bad coach can lead to many bad things...and that is what is happening to our Fire...again.

****************************

The Mikolic foul was in no way a red card...yellow was the right call. Yes, he tripped the player on purpose, but it was done without malice and he wasn't the last man, he slowly lifted his leg after the attempted slide tackle missed and he did enough to trip the player, not break his leg, a professional foul and a yellow is the correct call...

Husidic got the ball first on his yellow card...

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

I disagree. There has been a ton to bitch about, though, at this point such things are really endemic to the team & apparently coaching/technical staff as a whole. Some of the faces change, but the inability to improve remains the same.

Maybe we should import some of those good refs, from Bizzaro

Meh, aside from the tolerance of dissent, I don't think so. The amount of serious foul and dangerous play, IMHO is down from past years, and statistically we've come due. The jawing is not new, in any sense of the word.

The players never had any respect for them. Never have.

So predictable.

What exactly, is you complaining, going to do?

Never said you did. Just that you can't go one week without saying "the ref sucked". The shark, jumped it, you have.

See above.

I don't recall you being this paranoid.

I don't feel that there is a need to accommodate your bruised ego.

Yeah, we know that ain't happening.

That's not any less boring.

Until we have emotionless cyborgs that run the pitch, bad calls are just something you're going to have to deal with.

Far from it.

 

Again?

It's never stopped.

Mediocre coaching, mediocre players, lack of player development, parity rules that prevented the Fire from benefiting from players developed by CFR/CFJ, being "loyal" to players that are no longer starting XI quality, mediocre technical director & scouting, signing players for "golden parachute" contracts.

Every season or two, we fix one problem without really addressing 2-3 others, so nothing ever improves. Firing DLC isn't going smake Logan Pause any better, make Dasan Robinson any faster, make Patrick Nyarko able to shoot on frame or stay on his feet or fix John Conway's hair and God knows it's going to make Frank sign that CAM to replace Nowak that Pakovits has been wanting since forever.

 

Re: I told them "Chicago Fire, THEN puppet show!"

Do you need Ritalin or are you just moving the goalposts because your straw man on the refereeing failed? This discussion is about the officiating, not the coaching. I have never once said this season that we've lost points because of the officiating. Our epic fails are due to the fact that we're not very good and I've never said otherwise.

We could do that - if we were a bunch of **************. I'd prefer that USSF actually train our refs and hold them accountable for crappy performances. The level of play in MLS has improved considerably since 1996 but the officiating has emphatically not. The ever-widening disparity is partly (but not entirely) to blame for the mess we're seeing now in MLS as a whole. It will take years of effort and Nike money to build a competent officiating corps from the ground up and this will start at the youth level and will include getting the crazy-ass parents under control but there's no excuse for why this hasn't been done yet. The fact is, if the USSf wants our refs to improve and get those international assignments, they'll need to get some good (ie., not from Scotland, apparently) UEFA personnel over here to over see the process and do it right.

Speaking of Europe, the situation in there is completely different. There, the jawboning and whining is because the players are overpaid primadonnas who look down on the referees because the refs don't make a hundred thousand pounds or euros or drachmas or whatever a week like the players do. And the players from certain clubs *coughmanunitedcough* have simply developed a godawful sense of entitlement that they should get the benefit of every call ever. Then again, some (but not all) fans also have that sense of entitlement.

It's not new but it has increased. It only seems like it has gone down because Dema retired.

It's gotten worse. It used to be pretty much only really important calls or incredibly wrong calls that got the full-on yelling/screaming/gangwhining treatment. Now it happens many times a game.

What hasn't changed is the inconsistency of the calls which makes it difficult for the players to judge what level of contact is acceptable or not which, given that the rules leave a lot to the ref's discretion, causes problems when the same action gets a yellow card at one end of the field and not even called at the other end. In the first few years of MLS, most of the hacking was done mostly (but not entirely) out of a lack of talent by the Ted Ecks of the world. The players are now more skilled but also more cynical and so in the absence of consistent reffing, they're just upping the level of physicality until either a call is made or someone gets injured.

Yes, most strawmen are predictable which is why it's so easy to head them off.

You never know. If enough fans publicly point out the obvious, maybe a miracle will happen and someone from MLS, USSF or Nike will actually get embarrassed enough to try to improve the situation. More likely, it will take several more career-ending hacks to get the ball rolling but if the fans stay silent, it's a GUARANTEE that nothing will happen. If I was independently wealthy and therefore had the time on my hands, I'd try to work within USSf to push for it but as "just a fan", the only choice is to use my voice or vote with my feet and stop going to Fire games and I won't do the latter.

By that logic, we should shut down BigSoccer and all fans should just stay quiet at games like Nappieville mommies because it's all been said before. In fact, they should just stop playing soccer entirely and we should just all sit around watching films of Matthews, Pele, Maradonna and Bestie because it's all been done before too - and better.

Just as a lie won't become a truth through repetition, the truth doesn't stop being true just because someone says it's true.

I don't recall you making such a bad whiny strawman before, even about Armas.

Does everyone but me have this crappy stupid argument on a macro or something? It comes up EVERY TIME someone makes a legitimate criticism of officiating in any sport. And it's just as stupid every time someone says it.

 

I agree with you. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't shitcan Carlos. But it does mean its probably time to clear out Frank and everyone else on the technical side of things. I personally would keep Mike Jeffries as people I respect have always said he is an excellent talent evaluator. If he was, indeed, responsible for the Uruguayans, then those are the best signings for awhile. Even if Frank has some responsibility there, he also bears the ultimate responsibility for the whole roster and that has been on a downward spiral for a while.

Of course, I do think its hard to tell about our young players as I think they do not develop at the first team level with our current coach and staff.

But, yeah, its time to do a clean sweep and give control to someone that knows what he or she is doing.

 

You mean since Blanco?

But yes, it's pathetic how much were playing for Logan. We can get a logan pause for much less and spend that money on say a midfielder with a bit of vision. Seattle signed Mauro Rosales for 42k.
Maric we can all tell is probably going to be a gigantic waste of money.

 

When we used him as such, yeah.

I know that we've had 4 different coaches now since Bradley, but really, are they all that different? We keep trying to turn forwards into attacking/creative mids, instead of you know, going out and getting that attacking/creative player. I broke my heart last night to see Puerari tracking back the corner to the right of S8 to get a ball and start the attack, because no one else would make any attempt to carry the ball forward.