South of the Border

DEPORTIVO SAPRISSA 2:0 CHICAGO FIRE
GAME SUMMARY

Man, something about that Carribean air just gets to Henry Ring, doesn't it? After getting completely shelled in the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup quarterfinal with San Juan Jabloteh, the Fire keeper once again had his problems in the same portion of the semis, this time with Costa Rican club Deportivo Saprissa, with the Fire coming up 2-0 losers.

After a first-half that I can only assume from several accounts (Comcast had trouble acquiring the television feed in the Chicago city limits) was a bit of a physical stalemate, Ring got tricked on a knuckleball of a shot from twenty yards that curled in at the far post early in the second. Granted, it's easy to blame the keeper for letting goals in, and noone closed down the Saprissa player at the top of the defensive third, but he didn't even reach for it. As far as I could tell, the ball had absolutely zero spin on it, so who knows, maybe that's much harder to judge with any velocity.

The second goal had similar characteristics, for a goal that was completely different. First, we missed captain Chris Armas, ejected in the first half on a dubious second yellow card. Armas is exactly the kind of player who could have shut down the free man taking the shot on the first goral. Third-choice defensive midfielder Logan Pause bit way too hard on a give-and-go, which freed a Saprissa forward for a quick hard shot in the box. Ring got a bit of a hand on it, but seemed to be caught in between steps, as a kick save might have been more effective had his legs been under him a bit better.

So, the story of the second half was lack of effective pressure in the defensive midfield and some poor reactions in goal. On the plus side, Nate Jaqua looked more comfortable in the midfield than in the the past couple of MLS matches, particularly when he took advantage of his speed and long strides to beat players to the ball. For the most part, the actual backline of the defense looked good, with Jim Curtin and C.J. Brown playing particularly well.

The somewhat disturbing trend, and I noticed this in the second leg of the quarters as well, is that we tend to give attacking players too much space in our defensive third. You can almost get away with it in MLS, although I'd worry about Los Angeles in particular, but these CONCACAF sides seem quicker to pounce and quicker to shoot, and shoot hard.

Up top? I still don't know just what's going on there. Dipsy Selolwane didn't provide the magic bullet some fans seem to think he has in him, so maybe now they'll shut up about how he should be starting. We may have gone in too casual again. Not in the same way as with San Juan Jabloteh, where I honestly think we didn't expect much of a game from them, but more a sense of overcondfidence in our ability to come back from a loss on the road after the pasting we gave Jabloteh to get here. We maybe should have pushed a little harder a little earlier, and gotten our subs in the game before the 70th minute.

At the end of the day, we did better than we did in Trinidad, so it's an improvement. And we didn't score very many goals early last year, either, so I'm inclined to not get worried about that. Yet.