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Fire Fri Sep 05 2008
A Sort Of Homecoming
The Fire play conference rival New York Red Bulls this Saturday night. The last time the two teams met the Fire absolutely stomped the Red Bulls 5-1 in one of their best performances of the season. Things have changed since then. The Red Bulls have put together a decent run of results, bringing them withing 3 points (ie, one win) of the Fire in the standings. The Fire are coming off a 2-1 loss against Houston which underlined many of the team's failings if they want to be championship contenders. Despite being loaded with talent, they don't have the chemistry, organization, or work rate that the defending champs showed last week. On top of that, the Fire will again be missing Blanco, Gonzalo Segares, and Marco Pappa due to World Cup Qualifiers. So it should be pretty interesting with New York looking to gain ground and a backs-against-the-wall Fire team looking for a chance reassert itself. That's not what matters though.
What matters is that this is the first trip back to Chicago for New York Red Bulls coach Juan Carlos Osorio. Osorio came in to replace fired Fire coach Dave Sarachan last year, stayed for about five minutes and jumped ship as soon as he had a better offer in New York. Hopefully meetings between Section 8 and the Fire front office this week over the Sector Latino affair mean the banners, drums, noise and (yes, Cuahtemoc) drunkenness will be back in time to give Osorio the welcome that he deserves.
