Back-to-back losses by three goals, two games in which we allowed a player to score a hattrick, another bump in the season road: Call it what you will, but last night’s 3-0 loss against the Chicago Fire came on the back of an abject performance from nearly every player on the pitch. There is one notable exception: The indomitable Javier Morales, who returned from that horrendous injury to play his first 30 minutes of the beautiful game since that fateful day in May.
More on Javi later in today’s post, which may be a short one (but when I say that, it’s usually not particularly short.) Tomorrow, I’ll speak more to the return of Javi, but today, I’d like to focus on the loss while it’s fresh. What exactly went wrong? I think you can break it down into a few key pieces.
- The normally cool-headed Kyle Beckerman saw red for a moment of utter madness, when he, frustrated perhaps at being kicked a bit from behind, went in with his head on a player. It wasn’t your garden-variety headbutt (and it was hard to see from swathes of the grounds) but it was certainly a well-deserved card for our captain. It’s particularly puzzling, because Kyle is normally the cool head in midfield, the “smooth operator,” if you will. But one moment of frustration, and he was gone, and our match was turned on its head.
- Kyle’s replacement, Yordany Alvarez, was heavily involved in the second and third goals scored by Chicago. After his stellar debut last week, he looked absolutely pedestrian against the Fire. On both goals, he was marking his man, lost the ball or the man, and just gave up. He stopped tracking, and the time that allows a player in a very dangerous area meant that we were never going to have a chance in the defense. When you allow a good player time on the ball — and more importantly, time to think — you’ll get burned (please pardon the pun) every. single. time. You could see it in Jason’s post-match interview that he was very, very unhappy about Yordany’s play — as well as the rest of the team.
- Up front, we had numerous chances through the able legs of Alvaro Saborio. He’s a brilliant player on his day, but he had a few one-on-one chances that he should and could have finished. He didn’t. We lost. That’s about all there is to that. He’ll be beating himself up about them, I’m sure, so there’s not much need to do it in my analysis.
- The reaction of our squad to the refereeing problems and the concession of three goals was miserable. They looked as unmotivated as I've ever seen this group of players. It was, at best, surprising. At worst, it was disheartening. We're a better team than we showed, but who would know it? We looked like a team with a designated player in Javi Morales and a bunch of underpaid clods. Clearly, they're not — but if you were a neutral watching, what would you have thought?
- The refereeing was abject. A few big things stand out in my mind: 1) He allowed the Fire to waste time every chance they got. 2) His understanding of advantage play was amateurish at best. When we suffered a foul, he allowed play to move backward and called that advantage — he’d be ripped apart for that if he were in Europe. 3) At the end of the 90 minutes, he blew the whistle to end the match — after at least four minutes of stoppage should have been added. I know the match was basically over, but these are the fundamentals of the modern sport. Now, I refuse to blame the referee for our loss, because he had nothing to do with our collapse, but we cannot continue to suffer through refereeing performances like that one.
- And a final note, please, don’t run onto the pitch. It’s not a question of passion. It’s not a question of caring too much. It’s simply stupid. Many people were upset about the refereeing. Many people were upset that we lost. Many people were as passionate as they’d ever been. Only one person ran onto the pitch. That says something, doesn’t it?
Right, I suppose I’ll talk more tomorrow about the nonsense. But I’ll also talk more about the glorious return of our playmaker, Javier Morales. It’s absolutely inspirational to have him back, and that, my friends, outweighs any loss we could have suffered.
Come on you Claret and Cobalt!
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