Red Bulls’ soft play leads to dumpster Fire
Saturday was the quintessential trap game, and the Red Bulls fell right into it.
Facing a team they’ve owned in an arena they’ve dominated, they still found a way to lose, shocked 2-1 by sorry Chicago in front of 18,784 at Red Bull Arena.
“The urgency was missing,” admitted goalie Luis Robles. “What I saw was a trap game. ... We were hoping we could get on a rhythm and put a couple halves together and we weren’t able to do that so we were punished. They played like they really wanted it. They played really desperate to get three points.
“You can’t count teams out. You can’t just look at the standings, think they’re at the bottom, we’re higher than them so we’re going to win. Or we’re at Red Bull Arena so we’re going to win. [This team] is very good but we’re going through some growing pains. ... We have to show improvement each and every game and we didn’t do that.”
What they showed was how easy it is to knock off a team resting on their laurels. They had a perfect home record this year, and the best home mark in the MLS since open- ing Red Bull Arena. And they were on a seven-game unbeaten run against the Fire (2-3-1, 7 points), mauling them 4-0 in the knockout round of last season’s playoffs. “I even talked about their quotes in the press, their coach, their players, and we weren’t up for it,” Marsch said. “We weren’t up for it. We thought the game was going to be about passing and football. It was more about a team that’s desperate, that needs points, that has a point to prove. And they showed it. So good for them. ... Our naiveté and inability to understand what we were in for meant that on the day we came in second.”
The Red Bulls (3-3, 9 points) didn’t figure it out until it was too late. They controlled possession of the ball nearly 63 percent of the game and outshot the Fire 22-3, but suffered a classic smash-and-grab.
Red Bulls defender Aaron Long’s headed clearance fell to Aleksandar Katai who blasted a first-time volley for a 30th-minute golazo. They pushed hard for an equalizer, but five minutes later Daniel Royer was robbed by Fire keeper Richard Sanchez’ kick-save, and Kaku’s follow forced a diving save.
Katai set up another score, beating Long and getting taken down in the box by Robles to earn a penalty that Nemanja Nikolic buried in the 69th.
Royer hit the woodwork in the 62nd and saw a goal waved off, with Derrick Etienne Jr. ruled offside on the pass. Bradley Wright-Phillips pulled a goal back in the 81st when he redirected a rebound into the net, but that’s as close as it got.