You want to give me a name wearing a Fire uniform that has the composure in front of goal that has been better?
Hristo Stoitchkov. And you Said "MLS hasn't seen," not "Fire Fans haven't seen" which would make the list even longer. No knock on Niko, but he's had a hot streak, not a career.
He has already scored more goals than any Designated Player not named Blanco or Accam or Kennedy (one away). He would already be top scorer in: 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2012 2014 2016 For the current Chicago Fire, that practically constitutes a career, unfortunately.
one can't help but note the cutoff date on that list. But I wasn't necessarily thinking of Fire players when I initially responded. First and foremost, I was thinking about Stoitchkov, but also Keane and Wright-Phillips. No knock on Niko, whose nuts I have mounted, but we'd should probably get a larger sample size before we start saying "MLS has never seen this before"
I love that everyone is going to say Niko had a bad game but will ignore the fact that he was clearly in position to score four times. His finishing was off today, but his game was fantastic. Hamid robbed him twice, I think.
We don't judge strikers for being in the right position. They are professional they should be in a position to score. The only thing that really matters is the ball ending up in back of the net.
I WISH he finished off the chance though from the magician Bastian. But yeah he was in 4 great opportunities and the way he's been going this year, I wouldn't expect him to have too many games like that.
I was just about to post this. The last shot on the ridiculous Schweinsteiger play was an awful miss. I agree that Hamid made a couple of good saves. Yep, and he has scored 10 in 12 games this season. That is not too bad, is it?
Did his misses today hurt the Fire? Nope, we won. Had DC United won 2-0, I might agree. Also, you have to judge his other performances. No striker scores every time or every game. However, scoring 10 in such short order demonstrates something.
Oh, come now, if we still had Potato, Nikolic would have been pulled and replaced with Michael Harrington in the 50th minute.
By definition, if he put himself in great positions to score 4 times in the match and had zero goals, he didn't have a good game. That's the striker's life. If they didn't have bad games the golden boot winner would have 30 goals every year. Winning, on the road, while Niko has an off night finishing, is a serious positive.