Bridgeview, IL-Defense seems to be the big issue for the Chicago Fire. It was seen at the end of last season and it showed up once again in the season opener. Just how will the Fire fix the defense from this match and moving forward?
Remember, Chicago ended last year with a 4-0 loss in the opening round of the playoffs and gave away another four in this one.
Maybe, it’s a burning question for the club to consider after seeing a comeback opportunity literally fall by the wayside in a matter of the couple minutes. In a 4-3 decision given to Sporting Kansas City at Toyota Park on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s concentration and the lack of awareness, that’s the whole team,” Chicago Fire head coach Veljko Paunovic said. “All of them, we all have to do a better job defending. Because, if were not consistent then this was going to happen. We can score a lot of goals and we’ve proved that in the past and we did it today. But if we don’t defend well, commit those innocent mistakes and it will just come back over and over again.”
Even though the four mainstay players in the back were Chris Dean, Johan Kappelhof, Matt Polster, Brandon Vincent and goalkeeper Richard Sanchez. There still have to be ways to find improvement quickly or find others that can make the backline much better. Whether to look at players on the roster or looking elsewhere.
“We learned from this in the preseason and we still have to keep working,” Paunovic added. “There’s still a lot of positives, but it’s time to turn on the red light and start working hard.”
The Fire gave up a total of four goals with the final two coming in a three-minute span late in the match, after Chicago had taken the 3-2 lead.
“We have to work more as a team,” Kappelhof said. “We need to be steady and ready out of the back. Just defend more as a team. Not let them come that easy at us. We did work hard in the second half, but we gave up the two to easy.. It wasn’t good enough.
“I think the goals were in the transition and they came out quickly. One guy past two of our guys and we were not defending well in the back. We have a lot of things to work on.”
Trying to see the other parts of the team helping out on defense maybe the missing part of a better effort in this match. It’s something that bothered midfielder Dax McCarty from what he saw.
“(Sporting Kansas City) had some nice goals, but most of them were self-inflicted,” McCarty said. “Whether they were turnovers in the midfield that lead to them getting out on the break. Whether not following the runners, whether losing 1 v 1 battles. There’s little things that happened before the goals that can be solved.”
The best part about this match was that its the opener of the season. Chicago has some time to get back at it before their next match up in Minnesota and host Portland later on in the month.
