Well another Chicago Fire home opener is in the books, and Thursday night’s demolition of the New England Revolution made the 2008 edition one for the ages. The Fire struck early and often in a dominating and extremely sharp performance, and to beat the team who knocked us out of the playoffs last fall by four goals was supremely gratifying for the Chicago faithful. Without question, our supporters should be very excited by how the team performed and I am sure that all of us will remember this win for a long time.
The biggest heroes of Thursday night were probably forwards Chad Barrett and Tomasz Frankowski, who combined for three goals and an assist between the two of them. Cuauhtemoc Blanco also had an excellent night and extended his scoring streak to two games by converting on a 37th minute penalty kick. Justin Mapp and Gonzalo Segares were two more players who showed particularly well, and their work down the left wing gave New England fits all night.
The Fire were dealt a dream hand when the Revolution’s Jeff Larentowicz was sent off after only seven minutes and with his team already trailing by a goal to nil. Larentowicz’s tackle of Fire defender Brandon Prideaux was reckless to be sure, but the sending off was ultimately a very harsh decision.
Nevertheless, Chicago deserves a ton of credit for taking full advantage of the opportunity they were presented with. Even with the Revs down a man, leading 4-0 by halftime is no small feat and head coach Denis Hamlett deserves credit for having the guts to start five out and out attackers (although it was lucky that the red card played right into his hands). Furthermore, the team displayed impressive organization and great energy, and this combination was simply too much for a New England side lacking in resources to overcome.
I’ll have a few more posts with analysis from the match up soon, however considering how many topics there are from Thursday to cover, I thought it would be easier to break them up into different posts.
Scoring Summary:
CHI -- Chad Barrett 1 (Justin Mapp 1) 4
CHI -- Tomasz Frankowski 1 (unassisted) 22
CHI -- Cuauhtemoc Blanco 2 (penalty kick) 37
CHI -- Tomasz Frankowski 2 (Chad Barrett 1, Cuauhtemoc Blanco 1) 39
Misconduct Summary: NE -- Jeff Larentowicz (ejection; Serious Foul Play) 7
NE -- Shalrie Joseph (caution; Dissent) 7
CHI -- Justin Mapp (caution; Reckless Foul) 17
NE -- Kenny Mansally (caution; Tackle from Behind) 23
CHI -- Chad Barrett (caution; Dissent) 50
CHI -- Diego Gutierrez (caution; Delaying a Restart) 89
Referee: Baldomero Toledo
Referee's Assistants: Rob Fereday; Jason Cullum
4th official: Ricardo Salazar
time of game: 1:43
attendance: 15,553
weather: Rain -and- 40 degrees
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