I've Seen England, I've Seen France, I saw Freddy Underpants

The 2009 Chicago Fire are still unbeaten. "The Unvincibles" as I like to call them, are a hallmark of consistency; we now have 4 straight draws. We can draw after going 2 goals down on the road, we can draw after going 2 goals up at home, we can draw with a man advantage, we can draw when we're a man down. Saturday night's somewhat disappointing 1-1 match with new league darlings the Seattle SuperSounders was just another display of our teams dogged commitment to leaving 2 points on the table. The Drew Careys came to town with a reputation for scoring a ton of goals, and they featured a number of exciting players- USA hero Kasey Keller in goal, team scoring leader Fredy Montero, the league's top rookie (Steve Zakauni) and the main attraction of the evening, cutting edge metrosexual and former Calvin Klein spokesperson Freddy Ljundberg. The Sounders have had a hot start to their season, mostly due to Montero's goals and Keller's net minding; Freddy's been solid but not spectacular, and had just returned to the squad after a return to Sweden due to the death of his grandmother. The Fire have been mired in mediocrity for the most part-- last year's stellar defensive play has been absent, Jon Busch is suddenly dodgy on high balls and his bad decision making at the edge of the area has cost him in the GAA department. McBride has been hot, with 5 goals so far, and Blanco, while morphing into Valderrama clone (running? what is this running?) has been effective spreading the ball around.

The first half of the match mostly belonged to the Fire; The back line played high and John Thorrington and Logan Pause's harrying closed down most of the space for the Seattle midfielders. All of the possession didn't come to much with the exception of a rocket volley from Patrick Nyarko which had Keller beat but came off the post. The second half took a rather typical turn-- Montero was sent off for an elbow to Gonzalo Segares' face and the SuperSounders were forced to bunker for most of the remainder of the half. The Fire kept the pressure up but couldn't add the insurance goal. Late in the match the inevitable happened-- the Fire conceded a corner, which was taken by Freddy in his only significant action of the game. He delivered the ball to the back post were a marking breakdown allowed Tyrone Marshall to volley home what turned out to be Seattle's only shot on goal all game.

All in all 1-1 was probably a fair result -- when given more than 30 minutes with a man advantage the Fire could only muster one goal and the defensive breakdown was similar to what we've seen all year from our back line -- excellent man marking and distribution which is prone to stupid lapses on balls in the air. Seattle played like a Sigi Schmidt coached team -- they were very well organized and for the most part knew their jobs. Impressive for an expansion team, I've certainly seen a lot worse this year (hello RedBull!). The Fire are showing some cracks -- they need to cut down on the mistakes. Tim Ward has been a revelation at RB and Thorrington's switch to a more central role with holding responsibilities has gone well. Having Blanco on the field with no interest in defending, chasing balls or even really running after anything that's not a long ball to him in the corner is taking its toll on the players around him and I think that the extra running everyone's forced to do to cover for him will end up taking a toll. Then again this is MLS and the regular season is nearly meaningless, so perhaps it's pointless to think too much about any of this right now.