PBP: Fire invade Montreal for football and Poutine 5.16.26 3:30 pm Apple TV

Another afternoon match for the Fire, this time in the great city of Montreal, Quebec Canada.

Last match out, the Fire blew away an underwhelming DC United team, 3-1.
I have to admit that I have been so busy that I have not watched a replay of the match.
I guess depending out today turns out I might watch it.

Now, the weary road warriors (well, Robin Lod is currently cosplaying the Lord Humongous, the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!, I vote Cuypers for Mad Max. I think Zinckernagel as the Gyro Pilot. Elliot for Pappagallo, leader of the settlers. I admit I had to look up that character's name. Had we not sold him in January young Brian G would be the "feral kid." Mixing metaphors and media, not sure who would be Hawk or Animal. Yeah, yeah, different "Road Warriors")...anyway
The Fire continue their assault on the Conference with another match in the Eastern time zone (for the record, the Fire and Nashville are the ONLY Teams in the Eastern Conference in the Central Time Zone).

Let's get two things out of the way right now:

1) Montreal is a great city. History, multiculturalism, great food, some good beer, I adore Montreal. A hell of a lot better than Toronto.
2) Montreal is a crap team. Terrible ownership, no heart, no outstanding players. They just suck. It is a bit of a shock that they actually have more than one point per match (13 points from 12 matches).

They have most of those 13 points by being very good at home. They have 3 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss in their five home matches.

All time the Fire have 11 wins, 8 draws and 13 losses versus the team from Quebec.
In Canada, the Fire have 4 wins, 3 draws and 10 losses. I actually thought it was worse than that.

They have a decent goal scorer in German born Ghana International Prince Owusu, who has 6 goals in only 900 minutes, and had 13 in MLS play last season. Pretty darn good, not Hugo Cuypers' good (of course), but pretty good. He has not scored in a few matches, so he might be prime to break that today. A player the Fire defense need to keep on this afternoon.

Next up, is young Venezuelan attacker Wiki Carmona. A substitute when the Fire host Montreal in March, he went on to score two goals the next match and has been a constant starter since then. Another player for the Fire defense to shut down.

One interesting note is that every new player for Montreal this season, except for 20 year old winger Noah Streit (from FC Basel, clearly trying to escape the shadow of Shaqiri) was from within MLS (a couple of academy players and intra league deals). The lack of ambition from Montreal is pretty stunning. Yes, owner Joey Saputo has other toys at his disposal (by all appearances, he seems to have lost much of his interest in CF Montreal, after he purchased Bologna (the team, not the lunch meat) a few years back.

Well, whether it is a relative lack of money or interest, the results speak for themselves.
Last year, they were 28th in the league. This year, they were early candidates for the Wooden Spoon, prior to a decent run seeing them "rocket" to 11th in the East. That said, a loss today, coupled with a couple of other results, they could be down to 14th (no chance of going bottom, Atlanta is rightly clinging tightly to the moniker of Worst Team in the East).
However, it is important to remember that Montreal played a massive number of road matches to begin the season, including their first six.
Today is their seventh home match in the their last eight matches (7 in MLS, one in the Canadian Championship).

It will be interesting to see if Canadian International Joel Waterman faces his old squad, after his transfer to the Fire last summer. His transfer brought needed stability to the Fire defense and paired well with Jack Elliot, but the emergence of Mbokazi has made Waterman an expensive bench player. That said, he is a veteran presence and can spell either Elliot or Mbokazi at a moment's notice.

As we all know, the Fire beat Montreal pretty soundly in February (Yes, Chicago and Montreal playing a match outside in February. Nuts to happen in either city), As you likely recall, the Fire went 1-0 early and then Jonathan Dean was "competently" red carded and the Fire played 56 minutes down a man. That said, they dominated pretty much every aspect of the match, scoring two goals in stoppage time to put the "Canadiens" away. It was a gutsy performance by the Men in Red.

This afternoon, the Fire need to be clicking on al cylinders again. As stated above, the Fire have a pretty terrible record in Montreal.

We will not have to face Chicago fire "legend" Fabian Herbers, as he is out due to sucking, er "lower body" injury.


Chicago Fire FC

• OUT: Leonardo Barroso (lower body)
• OUT: André Franco (lower body)
• QUESTIONABLE: Robin Lod (face)
• QUESTIONABLE: Sergio Oregel Jr. (head)
• QUESTIONABLE: Anton Saléros (head)

CF Montréal

• OUT: Owen Graham-Roache (lower body)
• OUT: Fabian Herbers (lower body)
• OUT: Bode Hidalgo (lower body)
• OUT: Josh-Duc Nteziryayo (lower body)
• OUT: Hennadii Synchuk (lower body)

Fire 3-1 today
The Fire take all three points today but Hugo Cuypers does NOT score
(see, since I suck a predictions, if I say he does not score, he will likely end up with a hat trick).

 

Sorry for the preview only an hour before kick off today.


I had graduation this morning and then had to grab some food.

 

Waterman starts
Radojević starts
Gutman to the bench.
Salétros does not make the team. His "head" must be bothering him.
Bamba, D'Avilla and Oregel dropped from the 18.

 

Yep, I was still editing after noticing Bamba missing.

 

Update! Thanks

 

42.8% win probability for the Fire. A bit of a surprise.
31.7% for Montreal

 

Seeing the Elvis musical?


My mom absolutely loved the Marriot Theater. One year we bought her a subscription for Christmas. She was thrilled.

 

Great individual attacking play by Zinckernagel, but the shot goes just wide.

 

GOAL!

Zinckernagel smashes it into the net, after some chaos in the Montreal box.