Bastian Schweinsteiger is so multi-talented that you can put him in almost any position and he’ll still likely be the best player on the Major League Soccer pitch. No matter where the Chicago Fire chose to put Schweinsteiger in their formation, he’s so much more dominant than your typical MLS player that he creates a huge mismatch.
This past weekend, in a 2-1 home loss to table topping Atlanta United, Schweini was back up top, playing in the attacking midfield, i.e. exactly where he belongs. He looked great, back in his natural, regular role after having been playing in the back line for the past few games.
Of course, he did a find job in the back line as well, where the Fire also need him, but club manager Veljko Paunovic is best served by keeping the former German national team in the same role with which he built his glorious career.
When Pauno was asked Saturday night about Bastian Schweinsteiger playing higher up the field than in the past few games, his response centered on the team as a whole.
“When I speak about the defense, no matter who plays, the whole team defends no matter what the formation it is,” he responded. “Don’t look where is Bastian playing, look where the team is doing.”
The defensive effort was solid, and certainly better than it has been lately, but it still wasn’t enough to get the victory. Schweinsteiger was asked about how it felt to be playing up top again.
“Good, I think it was real good,” the German responded.
“We pressed on quite well, we won a lot of balls up front, we had very good chances in the first half to score a goal, we didn’t score a goal, so that’s a little bit disappointing. We have to keep going, we played against a very good team.”
The good news for the Fire is that it’s a very quick turnaround, and they won’t have to wait very long to get things right again.
“I think we had good things in our game today against the ball, also with the ball,” Schweinsteiger said about getting past the Atlanta loss and moving on to Montreal Wednesday night.
“We did some good things, we created chances. Maybe some situations we could, when we have the ball, show up a little bit easier to get more ball possession and control the game. But if you ask me about the next game Wednesday, we have to recover fast and be ready to play against Montreal.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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