Thorrington brace pushes Fire past Colorado

The Fire scored an important victory Saturday night, using a pair of second half goals by John Thorrington to knock off the Colorado Rapids 2-1. For the second week in a row, the game was not even televised in Ann Arbor, so I was relegated to listening to the game on Spanish radio and then watching the highlights later.

Thorrington, starting on the right side of midfield for the second consecutive week, was the hero for Chicago. His second half brace, coming on goals in the 53rd and 84th minutes, staked the Fire to a 2-0 lead. Colorado pulled a goal back late as an unattended Torn McManus got free to tap home Christian Gomez’ free kick, but the Fire held on for the 2-1 result.

From what I heard on the radio, this match was just more of what Fire fans have become accustomed to in the early part of this season. Justin Mapp and Cuautemoc Blanco seemed to be the Fire’s most active attackers, but Mapp also - apparently – made his fair share of mistakes before his exquisite cross set up Chicago’s second goal. Gonzalo Segares, according to all reports, gave another fantastic performance, and it sounded like he was maybe even winning more balls in defense than normal. The entire backline apparently performed relatively well, and up front Chad Barrett and Tomasz Frankowski both failed to score although they once again had some decent chances(I atleast think they didn’t miss any sitters as easy as last week’s). Also, Calen Carr who came on as a late sub apparently missed a really easy chance to put the game away, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to Chicago supporters either.

Individual performances aside, this match also seems to mirror recent Fire performances in that the Fire delivered a solid but unconvincing performance, and still came away with a result. With Saturday’s win in the books, the Fire are now 3-1-1 and sit in second place in MLS’ Eastern Conference.

I really think that going into this season, most fans would’ve been satisfied with a 3-1-1 start by the Fire. What’s more impressive about that record, though, is that the Fire have managed to take 10 points from 5 games, while only truly outplaying one opponent. Nobody would dispute that Chicago dominated New England in their 4-0 win a few weeks back, but the Fire were actually lucky to get a win and a tie out of underwhelming road performances at Real Salt Lake and San Jose. Add in the Fire’s 3 points from two reportedly even home games (against Kansas City and Colorado) and you have a team that is consistently getting results without dominating its opposition.

Some might argue that at this stage in the season, performance is more important than results – after all MLS is decided by a playoffs rather than a league table. I disagree with that notion, however, because the MLS season is long enough that a team’s form in April or May is a pretty horrible predictor of how that team will be playing come September, October, and November. Just take the 2006 and 2007 editions of the Fire as an example.

More importantly, while the Fire’s results might not completely reflect the way they’ve played thus far this season, I wouldn’t argue that there are many teams who have been better over the first month of the season than Chicago. It’s not as though there are a bunch of stronger sides lurking behind the Fire ready to overtake them in the standings. The Eastern Conference is notably strong this year, however, and in a season where there might be more parody across MLS than ever before, every point taken in April could become really critical in October. I’m glad that the Fire will perhaps have the advantage, come fall, of having stolen some points along the way. Also, when you consider that Chris Rolfe and Andy Herron have not really even impacted the team thus far, I would argue that the Fire have room for improvement between now and the MLS playoffs. The fact that Chicago is second in the league without having played its best football up to this point is really encouraging.

Scoring Summary:
CHI -- John Thorrington 1 (unassisted) 53
CHI -- John Thorrington 2 (Justin Mapp 2, Tomasz Frankowski 1) 84
COL -- Tom McManus 1 (Christian Gomez 1) 86

Misconduct Summary:
COL -- Christian Gomez (caution; Reckless Foul) 45
CHI -- Gonzalo Segares (caution; Game Disrepute) 45
COL -- Herculez Gomez (caution; Persistent Infringement) 64
COL -- Kelly Gray (caution; Dissent) 66
CHI -- Diego Gutierrez (caution; Dissent) 88

Referee: Tim Weyland
Referee's Assistants: Corey Rockwell; Steven Taylor
4th official: Ricardo Salazar
time of game: 1:53
attendance: 14,251
weather: Sunny -and- 55 degrees