What Went Wrong In New England?

Obviously, the Chicago Fire have their work cut out for them in the second-leg of their playoff series with the New England Revolution, but supporters are obviously wondering how we got to this point after jumping out to a 1-0 lead on the road on Saturday.

The structure of the playoffs is part of it, as the home teams (read: lower seeds) did not lose any of the four matches between Thursday and Sunday. It's premature to complain too much about the format before the first round is over, but I've been trying to point out to anyone who will listen that the reason you have two-leg aggregates in Europe is specifically to eliminate home-field advantage in tournaments where there is no natural seeding, like the Champions League.

From that point of view, the Fire still have their home match to have their final say in this round, as do each of the other top seeds. So, in that respect, we're not really doing that differently than anyone else, even if we looked like we had the best chance of stealing a win on the road out of any of the four matches.

Which brings us to another match with poor finishing. Of course, we're not unique in that regard, either, but it's still discouraging. I'm not talking about the shots off the woodwork, but opportunities where we never quite got a good shot off. There was one ball on the far post where Brian McBride almost had too much time with the ball, tried to get it set just right, and got closed down before he could do anything. Throughout the season, those have been most frustrating. But New England had opportunities that they missed as well, particularly their two balls off the post when Jon Busch got caught out (and taken out) away from the goal.

The real issue, for me, was that our third, or maybe even fourth choice for left back finally had reality catch up to him playing out of position. I like Mike Banner a lot, but he struggled in this match, and his poor pass forced a bailout foul from C.J. Brown that led to the first New England goal. I've seen many people hang that one on Brown, but that misreads the play pretty badly. Could he have maybe tackled the ball away without fouling? Sure, but he shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place. That's why the late substitution of Gonzalo Segares is a big deal for the second leg. It was really good to see him back on the field.

UPDATE: Ives is reporting that Segares is done for the year. Which means I wouldn't be surprised to see Daniel Woolard get the start on Saturday.

On the second New England goal, I've been meaning to go back and watch the full play more closely, because Brown fell down at the top of the box just as the corner kick came in. I don't know if he fell of his own accord, or was "helped" by the Revolution, but as the defender with the most composure on the entire team, not having him present in the scrum that followed didn't help.

What does all this mean for the second leg? It's hard to say, because you've got New England with the momentum and the Fire with their awful home record, but it's also the playoffs, and I think some of the conventional wisdom gets upended in that context. Chicago is eminently capable of at least a one-goal win in this match, the question is if they underperform or overperform relative to those expectations.