As luck would have it (KC-CHI Post Match)

By: Herschel | April 20th, 2009

So for my first post I’ve decided to go with a run through of the Wizards-Fire game from last Saturday, where the Chicago Fire was able to snatch a tie out of the jaws of victory in a game they should have won; while the Wizards, with a poor showing but with lots of grit at the end of the game came back to KC with an away point.

Saturday night the adage “sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good” was a perfect illustration of the Wizards game play. They came back from a 2-0 deficit to rescue a point in the dying moments of the game after Chicago, tired of missing chance after chance to put the game out of reach had a horrible mental lapse and collapsed.

From the moment the game started the Wizards looked out-coached and outmatched last Saturday night. Learning from the mistakes that the Sounders made the week prior, the Fire collapsed on the only real scoring threat KC has had this year, Davy Arnaud, and did not let him play a ball for more than 2 touched for the first 20 minutes of the game. While managing this, Tim Ward and Gonzalo Segares spent the first half streaking by Matt Beasler and Lance Watson, who did little to contain them; to Beasler’s credit he tried to support the attack from his side, but his passing and chemistry with Claudio Lopez were just not there. With a midfield that could not hold the ball or string enough consecutive passes to keep the pressure off, the Wizards looked lost and the inevitable 1st goal came when Kevin Hartman and Jimmy Conrad clumsily collided when going for a lobbed ball, leaving the goal open for Brian McBride to slot it by both players. Chicago ’s attack continued and a few minutes later a Cuauhtémoc Blanco free kick off a Lopez handball found McBride again, who towered over a slow, unmarking KC defense, to slot a header by Hartman.

At that point I figured on a 4-0 tally, since the Fire wingers were running up and down the field uncontested, Blanco and his teammates swallowed a KC midfield that was absent from the game, leaving no attack that could lead to a comeback. Still, as is the nature of soccer many times, when a team takes a lead like this quickly, it tends to step off the gas, and that is what Chicago did, which let KC to start holding the ball more and stop the possible goal onslaught. Still, increasing control didn’t translate into anything for the Wizards but it kept the score within reach and only a lone shot from Jack Jewsbury let us know that John Busch was actually in goal.

The second half started off with Michael Harrington coming on for Santiago Hirsig who just did not show much of anything during and actually lost a couple of balls in midfield that allowed for Chicago attacks. Although the change gave the Wizards a bit more ball control, the Fire kept up their attack, with shots from Blanco, Thorrington and Nyarko coming close to extending the lead and making Hartman go from the 1st goal villain to the team hero keeping the team in the game. Around the 75th minute the Wizards made 2nd change bringing Michael Kraus into the game for a hard working Watson who was not contributing much to the attacking effort and was being outplayed. Although not a game changing sub, Kraus gave KC another body up front for the Fire defense to look over.

And then it happened: the Wizards, now in a 3-4-3 started gaining some momentum, not because the team was really playing better, but because Chicago got tired of missing sitters and allowing Hartman to thwart their chances. This gave the Wizards some new life. A new life that came in the form of a goal off a nice cross from Lopez (who did not stop running all game) that was knocked in by a streaking Josh Wolff who had been absent from the game until his goal in the 78th minute.

At that point game the Wizards, who had showed very little, suddenly became the aggressors; a shot by Gomez that Busch had trouble controlling and later a long cross by Harrington, missed by Conde and Soumare was tapped in by Wolff for the tie(although I could swear Soumare had the last knock). Chicago ’s last hope for justice was again saved by Hartman who kept out a nice header from sub Justin Mapp.

As the game ended many soccer clichés came to mind; the biggest one: if you let the other team off the hook you will lose. Yes Chicago didn’t lose, but I will bet anything that they left thinking of the 2 points they had just let get away; while the Wizards left the field thinking how lucky they were to have been outplayed for 75 minutes at Toyota Park and come out of it with a tie.

Here are my player ratings for KC: Hartman (7); Lance Watson (4), Jimmy Conrad (5), Aaron Hohlbein (5), Matt Besler (4) Herculez Gomez (6) Jack Jewsbury (5) , Santiago Hirsig (3), Josh Wolff (6), Claudio Lopez, (6) Davy Arnaud (4) , Michael Harrington (6), Michael Kraus(5), Roger Espinoza (5).

Highlights of the game are here.