If karma is a bitch, Juan Carlos Osorio just got bitch-slapped

On the one hand, last night was an emotionally gratifying win for the Fire. Even if Ives still can't tell the story from any perspective other than that of the Red Bulls.

I'm going to say this again. Juan Carlos Osorio was never as good a coach as anyone made him out to be. The fact that he had been touted in the Metrostars front office for so long should have been the first clue.

He may have lit a fire under some defenders last year to toughen up the backline for Chicago, but that's pretty much all he did. Rolfe's health and Blanco's arrival were much, much bigger factors. Osorio's tactics and his substitutions were, at best, exactly the same as the much-maligned Dave Sarachan, and probably even more conservative than that. His departure for New York was a blessing in disguise.

On the other hand -- and coming as no surprise to anyone who has been reading this stuff all season -- Wilman Conde seemed to try single-footedly to keep Osorio's playoff chances alive, losing Juan Pablo Angel on the first Red Bulls goal, and getting bailed out on two other particularly bone-headed defensive miscues by Jon Busch and Bakary Soumare.

For the first ten minutes or so, I didn't know how the game might go. Very tentative and sloppy from both sides. Then the Fire went the entire length of the field for a brilliant counterattacking goal. Diego Gutierrez headed a corner kick up towards midfield, where Blanco slipped a backheel to an onrushing Justin Mapp, who found Stephen King on a through-ball to the end line, which he then cut back to Chris Rolfe for a header into the back of the net. It was one of the prettier goals I've seen from the an MLS side in quite some time.

After that, New York just wilted. It seemed like the Fire were able to win enough 50-50 balls to rechristen them as 70-30 balls, cutting off passing lanes to make the Red Bulls pay for lazy attempts at possession. Angel's goal could have changed some momentum, but Chris Rolfe put a stop to that quickly with his second and third goals of the half, including yet another strike where he takes a ball out of the air and volleys it into the net before it hits the ground.

As if that weren't enough, Denis Hamlett's first substitute looked like it was defense for offense, taking out Justin Mapp for Daniel Woolard, except that Woolard then scored a goal within a minute of entering the match. Ouch.

You could maybe have made a case for getting some subs in sooner to get playing time for guys on the bench that you might need in the New England series, but in the context of absolutely humiliating the coach that walked away from this team after three months, I think that's just quibbling.