congrats. Awesome atmosphere last night. It came off tremendous on tv. The best crowd i've seen in all the years i've watched MLS. A Fire/Galaxy finals would be the best thing for MLS. Beckham, Blanco, Donavan, McBride -- that's sick
Agree or disagree but either way, celebrate. Game recap and player ratings. http://fire.american-soccer-news.com/?p=492
Great win, great atmosphere, great team. Now it is time to finish the job and win two more games! CHICAGO FIRE! *CLAPCLAP-CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP*
There goes my optimism regarding Hauptman meeting with the ISA. Any chance you can discuss what happened here?
Check out the highlights of the game on MLS.net at 3:52...it's hard to see, but you can see someone in a red shortsleeve shirt get hit in the face, and then cover thier face with thier forearms and slump over...
Still hoarse from last night, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Mansally for running through Blanco the way Cedric Benson runs through defensive backs now that he doesn't play for Chicago anymore. By doing so he really pissed Blanco off and that was one of the best games I've seen from Blanco in a long time. Thank-you Mansally! We owe it all to you. Any chance we can get a RSL defender to say something about Blanco's mother?
BTW, what's the deal with the attendance? Why was no one there last week? Seems like NE has a good team most years and has a good group of fans no? Same for the superliga stuff... we sold out the final but like 3500 people there for the semi in NE? Was it b/c it was just a semi or what?
Not that I know much about it, but I wouldn't be so quick to place the blame on Hauptman or the FO... Seems like more an issue with security than anything. (And when isn't it? )
The meeting already happened. It may or may not be obvious, but the ISA met with Andrew on behalf of everyone. We didn't go to the meeting with a list of specific issues (he actually brought up replacing the Megabandera) that we think need to be fixed. Almost the entire conversation was based around the idea that the Fire need to open themselves up to constructive criticism from their entire fan base, not just us. That's why the town hall meetings are going to happen. That's when everyone can have their say. Until then of course, the ISA will continue to have meetings that are open to the public. My tenure as Chairman is coming to an end (three as Chair, five years on the board total...yeesh!) and there will be elections to replace my position as well as others. It's a great way to be involved with the club and very rewarding. The more people we get involved the better things will get. We'll continue to reach out to all fans and work on your behalf, but the more involved people get the more influence they can have. The ISA doesn't work as well as it could when people are passive about it. Get involved and be proactive, make it work even better. Until then I hope the town hall meetings are good and I hope we can get hundreds of you involved when designing the charter. That'll be a big challenge but worth a ton to the club.
I wish I could have been there last night. I was going nuts watching it on TV. One of the most intense game I've witnessed in recent memory. I'll give kudos to Hamlett for changing up the lineup and allowing Thor to play as an attacking mid instead of a second d-mid and matching Shirley and Red on NE. I do have to question Hamlett on a couple of items. Banner better be seriously injured because it looked like Robinson was and Woolard was getting beat constantly. Banner should have replaced Robinson and Hammy should have slid Woolard to CB. And seriously, WTF with trying to sub out Blanco. God forbid if NE would have scored and the Fire would have had to go to ET and PKs without Blanco. It was a great game with a great result, but I was still doing a lot of screaming at Hammy and some of the players as well. MOM was Thor. Props to all of the players. Everyone played with intensity and spirit.
I can't really complain. I mean, Ratdog's strategy to wind down the clock by giving all the ballboys pot right after the 2nd goal was brilliant. But if the linesman felt the Revs had the right to get a ball from somewhere, I can't really blame him.
Maybe because I'm not a S8er, but flares don't often excite me. Having said that, that picture is AWESOME! Or should I say smokin'!? That game was well worth getting up in the middle of the night to watch. I ditched the bears and re-watched the Fire highlights - so much more satisfying! This is how I think most of us expected this team to play all year. That felt like watching Fire games of old. Like the victory was inevitable and couldn't be denied. Too often a tie or loss has seemed inevitable this year. I guess better late than never, but better still for it to have been there all along. The big question is if they can build off of this and continue, or if we revert to totally and completely inconsistent. I tell you what, I'll feel a whole lot better if at least one of Segares and Conde can come back, and supremely confident if they both can come back. I think our backline worked really hard last night - they kept the clean sheet despite looking pretty shaky. In the end, I think it's pretty remarkable that we didn't give up a goal with Robinson looking as mobile as fat shawn kemp, and Woolard looking ill adjusted to the job.
Great win for the Fire and their intensity was great for most of the game. However, there were plenty of potholes along the way. It was pretty obvious for much of the game that Pappa and Blanco were, for the most part, only looking for each other. Having said that, Pappa made a great pass to JT and it was an excellent finish. Rolfe was sitting on the corner just waiting to see if Reis was going to get to the ball and, if so, redirect it. To his credit, he let the ball continue into the net. Pappa has become much like Blanco, which is sort of a "me-first" attitude that I personally really dislike. He had some great moves last night but then tried to "be the man" IMO. Overall, not much of a team player except as noted above. Blanco was much the same as usual. Guys were busting their butts-especially Rolfe--to get to space and on a number of occasions, as he has done almost all season with Rolfe and McBride--he inexplicably looks the opposite way and often seeks out Pappa. Guess you could call it the Latino connection. There were a number of occasions where Mr. White held onto the ball when he had options available and he ended up losing the ball. Prus was horrible all night long and he is the referee of the year this year??? I heard last night that the reason the refs are letting things go is that Toledo in particular was chastised by the league for issuing too many cards so now anything goes? I can't for the life of me see how NE, last night as well as in the first game, got by with so many intentional fouls from behind with impunity. What an absolute farce of a game. And what was the problem when JT and BMB went down and NE kept on playing?? Doesn't the linesman on the north end of the field have a mic hookup to the center ref?? On both occasions, NE kept playing and attacking while one of our players laid on the field injured. Defensively, I have been on Prideaux all year about his lack of speed but I think we have someone even slower and that is Woolard. Repeatedly last night he was burned over and over again. Why in the world, after Banner has acquitted himself quite well in most of the games he has been stuck at left back, would DH replace him with a guy who runs as if his feet are stuck in the mud?? My only guess is that Mike didn't see the field last night because he got beat in the last game and NE scored on the header. That's CYO coaching, IMO, so I really wasn't too impressed with DH's decisons. And when will we get a defender that can head the ball out of the box like a Chad Marshall or someone similar? I know Conde tends to do reasonably well with that but on tense occasion in the first half, BMB, Dasan, and someone else all had a chance to clear the stinking ball out of the box and EVERY one of them popped it straight up in the air. No wonder we can't score on set pieces and other teams destroy us on them. And NE actually gave us the game at the end when they missed on two great opportunities which would have dramatically altered the results of the game. We bit a bullet and slid into the conference finals in spite of our proclivities to give up dumb goals on stupid defensive lapses and/or lack of focus. The major positives were that JT and Pause were absolutely solid in the midfield and Rolfe again was all over the field making plays and breaking up attacks. Together they really did shut down much of the Revs midfield play. Additionally, Prideaux played quite well overall and CJ did a really good job as well. Dasan appeared to be really nervous most of the game but fortunately he was able to keep the ball in front of him most of the game. Busch came up with some excellent positioning and was there to fortunately thwart those last couple of efforts by NE. All in all, like all of you, I am glad we are in the conference finals and I really think we have a great chance of going to Seattle at this point. However, I saw a LOT of boneheaded playing last night AGAIN so I can't say that I was impressed with the quality of soccer on the field. We still don't play as a "team" but we do have some great individual efforts out there from time to time. In addition, I am so fed up with the so-called "MLS officiating" (which I am beginning to think is a real misnomer-that they actually make almost any MLS game very, very ugly to watch. No wonder we can't play the "beautiful game" when the refs can't or won't be courageous enough to call the game the way it should be called. Mr. Garber, your officiating crews suck!! Other than that, wow, what a great win. Now let's beat RSL so we can get to Seattle!! See you at the game next week!!
The Hammer was not subbing out Blanco...the 4th official put the wrong # on the digiboard, 10, instead of 16...Denis was waving his arms about and yelling, (no punches were thrown) so the 4th official changed the board. In defence of the 4th official, he had to deal with a revs sub just seconds before, so he may have been overwhelmed.
Disagree with these two paragraphs. Blanco did an incredible job holding onto the ball and then turning almost every possession into a dangerous chance. He set up several McBride headers and was playing great passes to pretty much everybody. You say that players are working hard to get into good positions for him to play the ball into, and I think that's flat out wrong. The off-the-ball running hasn't been good this year (though it was better last night). When someone puts themselves in position for a dangerous chance (Prideaux making that late run up the right side to set up the first goal), Blanco finds them. And the officiating last night, while not perfect, was far above average for the playoffs so far. There were a few calls I disagreed with: Nyarko getting called for a foul on one offensive chance where I saw no foul, and then getting away with what I thought was a pretty blatant push in the back before setting up Blanco's goal; not giving Castro a yellow for that shot he drilled into the first row. Otherwise he was pretty good considering some of the officiating we've witnessed so far in the playoffs. I agree with your sentiments about Pappa, but he's still a young player and he's shown signs that he can be a good team player. As he matures as a player (hopefully with the Fire), I'd expect him to lose some of that "me first" mentality.
Then I would suggest you go back and watch some of the games from the past including last night. Rolfe and/or McBride often are lined up even with the defenders and looking for the ball from Blanco when he dumps it elsewhere. That has been going on for most of the season but if you don't see it, then it must not be there. Others that I have talked to who are pretty knowledgeable about the game would agree with me. Perceptions differ and I understand that so your opinion is as valid as mine. As far as the officiating was concerned, I am not sure what game you watched last night but the vast majority of tackles from NE were hits from behind and Jankauskus even threw a few forearms but then in the MLS, as I noted in my post, those are not considered cardable offenses. If you want to see attractive soccer, then the ref has to call those types of fouls, and, if necessary, issue cards early in the match and that will clean it up pretty quickly. Again, a friend of mine who has been a Fire fan for years and has done a LOT of officiating in his career, agrees with me on this as well as does John Gardner who, as I am sure you know, writes some pretty good stuff for Soccer America. Again, I like a game played without the illegal use of the hands and arms by defenders because it then becomes an attractive game to watch. Guess I'm just too much of a purist to think the level of officiating in the MLS is anything close to acceptable globally. Maybe that's why we don't see many (almost none) MLS officials chosen for the World Cup but then again maybe not. It's all in your perception.