It was the home opener for the Chicago Fire (0-1-0) on Saturday night, as they hosted the Vancouver Whitecaps (0-1-0) at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL. The Fire were coming off of a loss to the defending champs, Los Angeles Galaxy, where they didn’t put a shot on goal. The Whitecaps were also held scoreless in their opening game of the season so this one had a 0–0 score written all over it before a ball was even kicked.
The lack of scoring was nothing new to fans who followed the Chicago Fire thru their 2014 campaign and coach Frank Yallop knew he had to bring in some offensive talent.
The Fire signed a Scottish international Shaun Maloney and David Accam from Ghana as Designated Players while adding Nigerian forward Kennedy Igboananike and Brazilian Guly do Prado from English Premier League.
The influx of international talent has made the Fire an interesting team going into the year and have the experts predicting big things for Chicago. Expectations aside, the Chicago Fire have not been able to tally a goal in their first two games and have fallen to 0-2-0 on the young season.
The new acquisitions will need to provide some offensive production if the Fire expect to have a successful season.
The Chicago Fire dominated the 1st half of play as they were credited with 9 shots on goal and 4 corner kicks but were unable to put one past Vancouver goalie David Ousted. The Fire were without their number 1 goalie, Sean Johnson who came down with an infection earlier in the week and had to turn to veteran Jon Busch. Busch turned away three grade A opportunities before Vancouver scored the only goal of the match.
The 2nd half started off like the first with each team not being able to establish any offensive momentum but that change late in the contest. Vancouver was able to net a goal in the 86’ after a poor clearing attempt by Chicago defender Lovel Palmer. Palmer had an opportunity to head the ball to the corner but was unable to get it over Steven Beitashour, who made a nice pass to his Whitecap teammate Octavio Rivero and Rivero put in the easy goal.
The Chicago Fire have a long way to go to be a contender in the MLS but adding international talent and having the team play together for the 2015 season will help Coach Yallop get his team to the next level… but the first step has to be scoring a goal.