Kids will be kids

Earlier this week on the Chicago Fire official site, I examined the team's futility against crappy opponents. The notion there was trying to divine whether it was simply a matter of looking past the "easy games," or if there was something deeper. As is usually the case with these things, the simplest explanation looks like the correct one. This Chicago team takes some games for granted.

What I didn't answer in that column, though, was why. Mostly because I didn't know at the time, but Tuesday night's Open Cup semifinal was instructive in that regard. With a flurry of second-half goals, the Fire found themselves up 3-0 with twenty minutes to go. Then they let L.A. get back into it with a pair of goals in the space of about three minutes. Captain Chris Armas was quoted after the game saying that he didn't feel the team let up, but that momentary scare, along with the prior poor results, indicates differently.

The interesting parallels between that stretch of the L.A. match and, in particular, the losses to New England and Dallas, is that suddenly the Fire thought they could toy with their opponent. Early in the games against the Revs and the Burn, you could almost sense that players were trying a little too hard to make the highlight reel pass, to make the sensational shot, in effect, to show off. That kind of play is, in short, pretty immature for a professional athlete.

But that, then, is exactly the point, and quite possibly the source of some of the Fire's struggles in what has been an otherwise stellar year. This is still the youngest team in Major League Soccer, and simply assuming you can beat somebody simply because you're on a roll seems to be the kind of thing you'd expect from a team without more "adult supervision" on the field. To that end, the Dallas game saw veterans Jesse Marsch and C.J. Brown out of the lineup. In New England, it was Brown and Carlos Bocanegra, who plays well beyond his 24 years.

Coincidence? I don't think so. Looking over the lineups from some of the other more ignominious losses this season, names like Kelly Gray, Logan Pause and Orlando Perez keep popping up. And that's not to criticize those guys, it's just that it would be foolish to look to them for poise and leadership. Even Jim Curtin, as solid as he's been, is only in his third year in the league.

The next question is, does this hurt the team going into the end of the season and the playoffs? My optimistic side says that it won't, as the Fire have clearly gotten their bearings in the more important matches, and guys like Brown, Marsch and Armas, if they're on the field, should be able to put a lid on the younger guys' irrational exuberance. At the same time, the same inexperience that makes it difficult to get mentally prepared against the likes of the Burn could manifest itself in wholly unexpected ways come playoff time.

To date, it looks like the Fire have been able to create "playoff intensity" for their more important matches. Fans will have to hope that this has prepared the guys who haven't been there for the real thing. At the end of the day, the wake-up call of some of these losses, along with surviving the Galaxy comeback to reach the U.S. Open Cup Final, may be exactly what the team needed to galvanize their run for end-of-season glory.