Everything But The Goal

Another frustrating night for Fire fans, as Houston snuck in a goal before Chicago was paying attention and made it stand for the rest of the match to win 1-0 at Toyota Park. But it wasn't for lack of trying, which is the real frustrating part. I thought I heard Denis Hamlett say in the post-game press conference that the Fire did enough to get a goal, and some fans are going to recoil in horror as if he doesn't realize there's a problem, but he's right. Brian McBride had a great low shot to the corner blocked by Pat Onstad, and Patrick Nyarko's header to the near post was cleared off the line by Richard Mulrooney. Those are better scoring chances than most teams will get all game.

Which tells me two things. First, the Fire are painfully unlucky, and possibly more so at home than on the road. Second, Houston has a great defense. The Dynamo had only allowed 2 goals in their last seven matches going in, and coupled with just five goals in five matches at home for the Fire, you had a recipe for offensive futility even before factoring in the absence of Cuauhtemoc Blanco.

And so begins the search for silver linings, again, which is irritating, but still necessary. One thing that stood out in the debacle against Dallas last week was Marco Pappa's reaction to being replaced in the starting lineup by Justin Mapp. He pretty clearly didn't like that, and really took charge when he came into that match as a sub, and I think Pappa continued that intensity against Houston. He was very active, and worked to direct the offense quite a bit through the first half to fill the void left by Mr. White. Unfortunately, when he switched over to the right side in the second half, he seemed to lose his mojo.

In terms of overall play, the Fire were able to absolutely dominate Houston after the goal woke them up. No need for a halftime team talk here. They knew they had to do better, and did. Passing was crisp, runs were good, and the defense denied any further damage. Unfortunately, better wasn't quite enough, and while I'm still a big fan of second-year forward Patrick Nyarko, he's still only a second-year forward who lacks the killer instinct to make goalies pay when given a golden breakaway chance like he had in the first half when Bobby Boswell whiffed on C.J. Brown's long ball out of the back.

Speaking of, Brown was beaten by Kamara on the end line as the first part of the goal-scoring play for Houston, which made me think the old man would be too slow to keep up for ninety minutes, but the rust seems to be coming off and he had a good game after that -- how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I will still fully acknowledge that the Fire misses the injured Wilman Conde in the back, particularly last week in the Dallas match. My usual criticism of Conde is not that he's a bad defender -- although I do say that sometimes -- but rather than he's not as good as everyone says he is. He would have been better than C.J. starting his first match of the season on that occasion, clearly. This week was more of a toss-up, as he might have been more likely to chop down Kamara in the box.

Two losses in a row isn't the end of the world for this Fire squad, who are still in first place in the East. I'm fully a subscriber to the Nietzchean "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" theory of soccer, particularly when those things not killing you happen early enough in the season that you can adjust. This team has the talent, but Hamlett still needs to find a way to squeeze that extra 10% out of his players in order to live up to that potential.