BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - A loss was bound to happen sooner or later. Instead of it taking place against one of the higher-ranked teams in Major League Soccer, it wound up being one of the lower-ranked squads in the Western Conference.The Chicago Fire saw their undefeated string come to a close Sunday afternoon as FC Dallas earned a 3-0 victory Sunday afternoon at Toyota Park.
Eastern Conference-leading Chicago fell to 5-1-6, while Dallas climbed right back out of the Western Conference cellar to improve to 2-6-3.
The Fire were shorthanded with Cuauhtemoc Blanco out for Mexican National Team duty. They were playing their third game in the span of about a week. So perhaps Chicago was allowed a mulligan, but the team is not about to jump on board with that mind-set.
“You can’t really use that as an excuse,” midfielder Justin Mapp said of the team’s busy stretch. “We’ve definitely logged in a lot of minutes. It just didn’t really happen today. It was frustrating.”
Dallas played an open game, especially in the first half, and dictated many elements, whether it was a set piece opportunity or strong runs in the middle of the field. After all, Chicago had a bunch of new starters in both the midfield and defense. Fire defender Wilman Conde was out because of a shoulder injury. Blanco was not with the team. And some players simply needed the rest.
“We tried to take advantage of that by moving the ball. And the heat helped us,” said Dallas head coach Schellas Hyndman, who was sent off in the 80th minute for dissent. “Overall I was very pleased with our players. The ball hasn’t bounced right for us this year, and today it did bounce right.”
The prime example of that was in the 35th minute, when Dallas was the beneficiary of an own goal. Dallas already had a 1-0 lead on a Jeff Cunningham header in the 15th minute. But later in the half, Dax McCarty took a free kick that sailed to the center of the Fire defense. The ball sailed just over Fire forward Brian McBride’s head and bounced off defender C.J. Brown’s head and into the net past Chicago goalkeeper Jon Busch.
“It was a good ball for me,” Brown said. “Brian went up, and Brian was right in front of me. For some reason I felt like he was going to get it. And then I ended up pulling out, and it hit the top of my head.”
Dallas capped off its scoring in the 80th minute. Kenny Cooper scored off of a free kick that was a looping strike that nicked the crossbar and plopped inches past the goal line for a 3-0 cushion. Once again, Dallas benefited from a Fire mishap. Before that free kick, Fire defender Bakary Soumare picked up his second yellow card for bumping recent substitution Brek Shea.
“It was a breakaway, shoulder-to-shoulder. I think it’s a little harsh,” Soumare said of his subsequent ejection. “I’d have to see it again. But I can’t say too much about it. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“I thought the referee was a little bit out of position,” Fire head coach Denis Hamlett said. “I thought it was shoulder-to-shoulder.”
The Fire did have some scoring chances but couldn’t get much on goal. Their scoring leader, McBride, was right in the mix of two corner kick chances. In the 6th minute, McBride managed a header off of a Mapp corner kick from the left side. The ball went high and wide, and McBride pounded the ground afterward in disgust. In the 68th minute, McBride’s header (again off of a Mapp corner) went wide left. Patrick Nyarko (pictured above, right) was close by the far post but appeared to slip as the ball traveled out of bounds for a Dallas goal kick.
“I’m disappointed on the last one,” McBride said. “I should have had two of them.”
Next up: The Fire stay at Toyota Park and host the Houston Dynamo for an 8 p.m. match Friday, June 5. The game is televised on My50.
SlideTackles.net thoughts: By the Fire’s standards, this game obviously was a huge disappointment. But you also can’t fault the team for making quite a few personnel changes considering how many games they have had in this recent span. There were bound to be some lapses with two new defenders (Brown and Brandon Prideaux), or midfielders such as Mapp who have not logged as many minutes as they are used to.
In the end, the personnel moves might work out for the best for the Fire, because they will be dramatically shorthanded this Friday when red-hot Houston comes to town. Along with Blanco, the Fire will not have defenders Soumare (playing for Mali) and Gonzalo Segares (playing for Costa Rica) in World Cup qualifier play.
Libertyville native and Fire midfielder Baggio Husidic has finally played in the past two matches. Midfielder/forward Mike Banner should see some more time. And with Soumare and Segares out, and Conde’s status up in the air at this point, defender Dasan Robinson will be a key figure off of the bench.
For the Fire’s sake, it is nice to have the luxury of being in first place in the East to test just how much depth this organization has in store.
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