Bring on the Fire
November 8, 2009 by f4denz.
Well it was an exciting match last night as the Fire and Rev’s went down to the wire and in the end it was some bad defense by New England that let Blanco score to give Chicago the win in regulation time and claim the series. I think this sets up well for RSL but you could see that the Fire are employing a new tactic, a smaller pitch. They knew they could not deal with some of the speed that New England could put in their line up so they shortened and narrowed their pitch, yes they can do that as long as the pitch meets FIFA standards, which the officials check before the match. The pitch must be between 100-131 yards long and 49-98 yards wide, that is a lot of room for adjustments and I am sure that they will again play with a short narrow pitch in an attempt to take away the speed advantage we will clearly have.
RSL faced off against Chicago twice this year and both came after the All Star break, the first match up was at Toyota Park in Chicago. RSL played a solid match but a mental mistake on defense allowed Chicago go get a goal in 76th minute to win the match 1-0, but given the struggles of RSL on the road until recent weeks that result wasn’t much of a surprise and I was amazed in looking at the stats that only a total of 9 fouls were called in the match but that Chicago ended up with a 8-1 advantage in corner kicks.
The home matchup came in September and ended in a 1-1 draw in one of the last matches that RSL would play the 4-3-3. The shame in the match is that RSL had a number of early chances and were unable to convert them, RSL gave up a goal heading into the half when Rolfe found room between Olave and Borchers to get the touch to put it past Rimando. There is fairly good proof that Chris used his arm to bring the ball down but it wasn’t called and the Fire took a 1-0 lead with just a minute left in the first half. The second half saw RSL fail to capitalize again on a number of chances until Olave found a pass from Andy, as the Fire turned over the ball at midfield following a RSL set piece and Olave was able to stay forward and provided a perfect target for the long pass from Andy. There was a questionable no call in the area that should have been a RSL PK, but in the end RSL failed to advantage of their chances and ended the night with a draw.
These two teams play hard fought and tough matches and if you look at the two matches from earlier in the year this one could be a very tight match, I will post my match preview later in the week.
Other Action
Well I thought RSL would make it and we did, I picked Chicago and they made it, I also picked Houston and they made it, so my final 4 has at least 75% of the teams right and as Chivas and the Galaxy get underway their series is tied at 2-2 so if my pick is right and Chivas wins I will have picked all 4 teams to make it to the conference finals. It should be an exciting week as RSL gets ready to head to Chicago and try to punch their ticket to Seattle, now that the Sounders are out of it, there should be no problem finding tickets to the MLS Cup. It will be interesting to see how many of their fans show up and who they cheer for in two weeks.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
win one go to Seattle, win two and go into the history book