Toronto, ON – APRIL 28: Major League Soccer match between Toronto FC and Chicago Fire at BMO Field on April 28, 2018 in Toronto, ON Canada. (Photo by Michael Fayehun/F10 Sports Photography/Prost Amerika)
Saturday was the proverbial “Tale of Two Halves” for the Fire. Unlike most tales of two halves, this tale was especially mood swingy. The first half was terrible for the Fire on the pitch. Off the pitch, Fire fans in the Chicagoland who have to go through ESPN+ to watch the game only had a Spanish feed to work with for most of the first half. That led to some strong reactions on Twitter, most of whom directing their angst at the Fire.
In the second half, the Fire improved vastly with Schweinsteiger in midfield and ultimately taking advantage of a TFC team on fumes and missing several starters. In the end, Fire fans likely felt a little better after the 2-2 draw. It obviously does not mask a few things for the Fire such as the lack of depth compared to TFC and how the defense shut off for the first 20 minutes of the match. It also showed that the Fire do have a lot of fight and a lot of character in coming from behind and bouncing back from such an abhorrent first half. Now to see if they can use this as a springboard to get closer to the teams above the red line starting with Atlanta on Saturday (7:30pm, ESPN+).
ON A SIDE TO VAR: I am still a proponent of VAR because the opportunity to correct errors by the referee should be explored. It got it right on the disallowed Giovinco goal and Nicolas Hasler was offside. There was still suspicion of Giovinco being offside in the run-up to Osorio’s goal. Nemanja Nikolic was clipped by Ashtone Morgan in the area. And finally, there was one angle on Schweinsteiger’s goal that you can give the benefit of the doubt to Nikolic not being involved in the play from an offside position. Of course, those are just my opinions, but that’s how I saw each of those reviews.
My biggest concern is that the stakes for each match have exponentially increased the demand that every single officiating decision be scrutinized and not enough resources are being given to the officials to improve the accuracy of the decisions. UEFA have officials on the goal lines while VAR have been the tool of choice in MLS and the Bundesliga and will be used at the World Cup. There is still the room for error, but that should not be used as an excuse not to explore steps to improve the quality of officiating soccer matches.
ON A SIDE TO ESPN+: I likened the Fire’s move to go online only for local telecasts to when the White Sox (and Bulls and Blackhawks) moved a lot of their games to ON-TV in the early 1980s. That was during a time where local cable was not yet popular and the Cubs being on WGN for mostly all of its games and WGN becoming a superstation which made the Cubs more accessible to a national audience. To cut a long story short, the Sox got most of the heat for moving their games behind a pay wall of the time.
The Fire’s move does have its risks given that the club does not have the presence of the so-called big five in town (Bears, Cubs, Blackhawks, Bulls, and White Sox). It also has had a most poor decade in terms of performance and an unpopular owner among the Fire faithful.
The one big advantage that the club will point to is that they are getting a rights fee through ESPN+ as opposed to having to pay to be broadcast on NBC Sports Chicago or another local channel. That same reasoning is likely why the Fire do not have an outlet on English radio (which it only has had during their time in Naperville).
It is a tough sports market to get attention given the crowded landscape, but the Fire have not done the best job to play through that and get noticed in the long term. It was a shot in the arm for the Fire to get attention after signing Bastian Schweinsteiger.
Right now, the rewards of this ESPN+ deal are not making themselves immediately shown and incidents like Saturday’s during the broadcast of Toronto FC does not help matters. There needs to be a statement from the club that this will not repeat itself during the season and that the quality of the stream will improve in the future.
THOUGHTS ABOUT THE RED STARS: It was a 1-1 draw on Saturday night. The Red Stars have done very well for a side missing several key players, but at least two have come back. Sam Kerr played 90 minutes after being away on international duty while Julie Ertz is back from injury coming on as a second half substitute. Red Stars fans should be looking forward to the possibilities once Kerr gets fully acclimated with her new teammates and Ertz is 100% and is ready to start. Both may come as soon as Wednesday’s match at home vs. Orlando.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Throughout the month of May, I am going to do a brief preview of each of the 32 teams of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Yes, I know, the USA is not in it. But I hope to give you a brief description of each team in alphabetical order so you at least do not default to ancestry.com to figure out who to root for. Look forward to first preview coming very soon!
That’s all for now. More later.
Chicago Fire
Portland
