More time off not what Chicago Fire needed
The Fire wasn’t too keen on having a bye the first week of the season, watching other teams play while waiting its turn to get 2012 started.
Imagine the team’s disappointment to have a second bye this weekend in just the fifth week of the season.
“We’re not too excited about it,” veteran defender Cory Gibbs said. “At the start of the season, you just want to get a roll of games in and accumulate as many points as possible. But that’s the way the bye went, and we’re stuck with having to have another bye. So we’ll just have to prepare and regroup from the last game and just push forward.”
Ideally, a bye week would come a couple of months into the season, when the games are piling up and aches and pains could use time to heal.
“It’s kind of crazy how the schedule starts off and then you have some games in May and stuff that you’re playing a congested schedule, Wednesday-Saturday, so a little bit it doesn’t make sense,” said coach Frank Klopas, adding the club did point out the problem to the league. “But what are you going to do? Now that we’re into it to be in a regular week where we’re playing. You have to develop some kind of rhythm. Breaks are good at some point, but not at the beginning of the season because you want to get a good rhythm.”
It’s a quirk in the Major League Soccer schedule, brought on by the addition of expansion Montreal as the league’s 19th club. Odd numbers are not good for schedulers.
So here the Fire sits, not especially weary so early into what will be the league’s longest season, despite how it looked last weekend at Colorado in a 2-0 defeat.
“There was a lack of energy, a lack of focus, a lack of drive, I think,” Gibbs said of the Colorado match. “We needed 3 points, and that drive wasn’t there, so you look back on it and think about the things we have to regroup on and go forward. What we’re lacking now is a full focus knowing every game we have to go in and win. We do it in spurts, but we’re not consistent right now, and once we believe in that and believe in our consistency and not just relying on one game, we’ll be a way better team.”
That ugly showing probably had more to do with Denver’s mile-high altitude than conditioning, with a lack of games rather than too many. Write it off as one of those things, a blip to overcome rather than a harbinger of things to come, at least until further evidence shows otherwise.
Meanwhile, the Fire wishes Houston were coming to Bridgeview this weekend instead of next (6 p.m., April 15, Comcast SportsNet) so it could try to get rid of the stink Colorado left.
Instead the Fire gets Easter off but not the Greek Easter, as Klopas noted. It has time to let Dan Gargan’s sprained toe heal. It’s got time — two reserve games’ worth plus a friendly Saturday morning against the University of Louisville at Toyota Park — to let newly signed defender Arne Friedrich build up his fitness and goalkeeper Sean Johnson to work his way back into the lineup gradually.
It’s got time it doesn’t want.
“Time off is the last thing I need,” said Johnson, hoping to block out bad memories from the United States’ failed trip to the Olympic qualifying tournament by keeping busy. “I’m ready to be back. Never for a second was I not ready to be back. I feel great. I feel fit.”
Klopas prefers to look on the bright side, even if he has to strain a little to find it.
“Arne, from his standpoint, the break is actually good because it gives us another week now to continue to be training with the team. The two games will obviously be a good thing for him before the Houston match if he gets some good, quality minutes in a competitive match,” Klopas said. “He and Sean should be ready.”
Follow Orrin’s soccer reports on Twitter @orrinsoccer.