Let The Kids Play

I was a little skeptical when I saw the starting lineup for the Chicago Fire's match on Saturday against San Jose, but a lot of that was colored by the fact that I actually watched the match on my TiVo after watching the USA-Panama match. So I knew there was no score through about 75 minutes, and once I knew who was playing, I was worried that Denis Hamlett had squandered a chance to stay on top of the Eastern Conference.

Again, this was largely due to the one-day delay watching the match, which meant I knew that Toronto had drawn and both D.C. United and Columbus had won.

So, anyway, I was relieved to see that Hamlett's lineup experiment actually worked. In principle, I understand what he was doing -- especially with the SuperLiga semifinal last week, the starters could probably use a break. And Denis has probably forgotten more about the conditioning of professional soccer players than I'll ever know. But my concern was that, in starting so many B-team guys, he wasn't showing San Jose much respect. That can occasionally bite you in the ass, but this time it didn't, so good on the coach for taking a chance and having it work.

Of course, it helps when you can put Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Marco Pappa into a match at the 60-minute mark.

There are obvious parallels to the Gold Cup squad for the U.S., as Bob Bradley has said he's not going to swap out the guys that have gotten this far for the seven extra players FIFA gave him because of the Confederations Cup (except for Michael Parkhurst, but that's only because Jimmy Conrad still doesn't know how many fingers I'm holding up). It's going to be on first-team debutantes like Stuart Holden, Logan Pause and Davy Arnaud to win this thing, which will help them develop the confidence they need to compete at the international level in the future if called upon.

Bradley and Hamlett are actually doing the same thing here, and it's one of those things that short-term results-driven fans tend not to appreciate. At some point, you have to test your depth, and there's never really an ideal time to do it. So you take a tournament, or a presumably weak opponent, and you throw some guys out there to see how they do. Sometimes you throw them back out there after they've struggled to see how they adjust. There won't be a lot of these players in South Africa next summer, but if somebody goes down with an injury, Bradley is going to have a much better idea of who might be able to plug a hole.

Particularly with Bradley, I really think the way he's managed players through this summer has been remarkably effective. So I'm hoping some of that rubbed off on his former assistant as the Fire head into the second half of the season.