No Brain, No Gain

Okay, so the Fire's first match under new head coach Juan Carlos Osorio was on par with the team's first match under interim head coach Denis Hamlett. Which is to say, pretty abysmal.

For a guy who came in talking about playing quick passes and attacking football, his charges responded with pretty much the same lethargic, slow play that has plagued the team for months now. To be fair, Osorio has been reportedly working on corner kicks and set pieces in training as well, and the Men in Red actually looked dangerous on a couple of those.

At the end of the day, this game was more important for Osorio learning about his team than getting a result against the hottest team in the league, a team that had not let up a goal in weeks. I went to the post-game press conference for the first time ever, but resisted asking a question. If I had, it would have been "what is the most important thing you learned about your team today?"

But that's neither here nor there. What I learned about my team yesterday -- or was forcibly reminded of, anyway -- is that we do not press the attack with sufficient numbers. You can complain all you want about Chad Barrett taking too many touches before he's ultimately stripped of the ball, but it's not like he has much in the way of teammates making themselves available for a quick pass. This is inherently part of the problem when you play a 4-4-2 with two defensive midfielders. They've got to be able to commit forward, and quickly, or you have to have weak-side help from the midfielder playing the other wing.

No, really, complain all you want about Chad Barrett taking too many touches. Please.

The current predicament has me wondering more about last season. Why did we get so much better when Tony Sanneh reclaimed a spot in the starting lineup? What is it that we had during that stretch -- and in the past -- that we haven't had this year?

What I think is missing is a real soccer brain on the field. This is different than the skilled passion of Peter Nowak in the "glory days" of the team, although his transition to coaching indicates that he may have this, as well. It's about having someone who knows, tactically, how to exploit both your own and your opponents patterns of play on the field. Or even someone who can recognize a tactical need real-time on the field and address it.

This is what Sanneh brought to the game last season. This is what Jesse Marsch brought to the team for all those years. Someone who plays a sort of "smart reactor" role, making sure someone is in the right place to relieve pressure, switch fields, step into a passing lane. You can be technically skilled, you can be innately talented, you can have good instincts, but there's a bigger picture that I don't think many players on this Fire roster see, and the only way I can describe it is seeing the game sort of like a chess match, where you can visualize two and three moves down the road based on how you react, and pick the right reaction accordingly.

For an example in the opposite direction, this is why I'm continually down on Gonzalo Segares. While he may make quick decisions like he should, they're almost never the best decision for the play. Plus, there's that whole propensity to pass to the wrong team. Thiago is the same way. He'll pass up the opportunity to make an overlapping run to just hang behind the play so he can get the ball at his feet and penetrate from ten yards further out. It can be simply a matter of setting up five yards further to the right or the left to receive a pass, of moving into the right place to stretch the defense as the ball is moving up the field, of covering for a teammate so they can make a run.

Diego Gutierrez is one of the only guys I can think of who has at least a piece of this bigger picture thinking. And, actually, I think Logan Pause does, too, but he's never going to get the credit he deserves for that. Maybe Brian Plotkin. Almost everyone else on this roster may have talent, athleticism, tenacity, pedigree and/or experience, but that big brain that can play those attributes like a musical instrument, whether it's from the central defense or the outside midfield or wherever, still isn't there.