Natalia Chi
The Fire likes to talk about how they are a defensively oriented team and maintain their form and discipline.
They are not for fire.
After surrendering a two-point lead by two last year, the Fire squandered a two-point advantage on Saturday night, settling for a 3-3 draw with FC Cincinnati. The Fire were leading 3–1 until the 83rd minute, when Cincinnati’s Sergio Santos scored in the 84th minute before Junior Moreno’s second game in the 87th minute robbed the Fire of their first win of the season.
Coach Ezra Hendrickson was not happy, to say the least. A fire-(0-1-2, 2 points) corner that led to a goal for Santos.
“We rope them like that, but we don’t get the job done,” Hendrickson said.
The Fire are without Xherdan Shaqiri, Jairo Torres (upper right leg) and Federico Navarro (upper left leg) through injury, while Kay Kamara and Fabian Gerbers received two yellow cards in Philadelphia last week. Suspended from participating.
Still, even without five starting-level performers and two named players, the Fire took the lead on most of the frigid nights at Soldier Field, considered the coldest home game in team history. Did. However, the Fire were unable to close out the game, dropping two points and reminding people of their home debacle against Columbus and Charlotte a year ago.
The game wasn’t a loss like those games, but the Fire were celebrating points thanks to first-half goals from Kacper Psibilco and Rafael Chichos and Chris Muller’s 45th-second second-half goal. Hendrickson played fire with an attitude of preventing goals from corners while the match was looming, fouling if he was caught in a counter-attack, and making sure he wasn’t pushed or hit. I was hoping to by their man.
“It didn’t happen tonight,” Hendrickson said. “We almost lost that game.
An unanswered question, and one that the Flames must quickly figure out, is why does this keep happening? Minutes into the match, Hendrickson had no answer.
He suggested making training more competitive and situational so that Fire would be ready for crunch time. But fine-tuning practices only go so far.
“It’s all about competing,” Hendrickson said. ” [soccer] Too good it didn’t work. Tonight we played probably our best game of the three, but we still didn’t get the result we were hoping for.
Goalkeeper Chris Brady, who made five saves, identified one problem.
“I don’t think there’s a direct answer I can give you other than us as a collective. We need to be more disciplined,” Brady said. It should have been ours, we could have taken three points tonight but we didn’t and we need to be more disciplined from now on.”
In the offseason, Hendrickson was optimistic that the Fire could find a way to win games like this, reiterating how close last year’s club came to being a playoff team. It was clear how upset and disappointed he was to see one of the team’s biggest 2022 problems come early in 2023.
“It’s all about competing,” Hendrickson said. “It’s all about fighting for the badge.”
