'Three points a must' for Fire vs. Columbus
Forget all the injuries.
Forget the controversies. Forget the departures, both in the recent past or planned for a couple of months down the road.
The Fire organization only has two things on its collective mind right now:
1) Win the Supporters' Shield given to the best regular-season team; and
2) Win the MLS Cup.
The road to both goes into overdrive at 2 p.m. Sunday (Channel 50) at Toyota Park against defending league champion Columbus.
"Three points is a must for us," said Fire technical director Frank Klopas on Tuesday.
Columbus (42 points) sits atop the Eastern Conference standings, by 3 points over the Fire. A Fire win Sunday and the race is tied, though the Crew has a game in hand.
The Shield race seems like it's down to three teams, with Houston (40 points) also in the mix, though Los Angeles and Seattle are threatening to get back in it with five games to play.
"You want to walk away with 3 points," Klopas said, turning back to Sunday's game. "The thing you don't want to do is drop points at home. With 3 points we're right there."
Klopas knows the Fire's record at home (4-4-4) isn't good. The team has had a tendency to give up bad goals at inopportune times at home this season.
Still, better they play here than in Columbus, he said. That goes for this weekend's game but also for a possible conference championship matchup. Nobody in red has forgotten last November's disappointing trip to Ohio.
"We saw what it did last year traveling to Columbus," Klopas said. "That's on everyone's mind, but we still have a long way to go to get to that level.
"That's in the players' minds. They don't forget things like that. They relish the opportunity to be in a big game like this."
With Bakary Soumare gone, Chris Rolfe destined for Denmark, Cuauhtemoc Blanco 36 years old and having talked about leaving town, Brian McBride 37, captain C.J. Brown 34 and several other players' situations in flux, this could be a now-or-never year.
Klopas isn't ready to think ahead, though.
"It's now or never every year," he said. "You never know when you're going to be in a position to do something."
Spoken like a guy who won a championship with an expansion team in 1998.
"Right now the only thing I can tell you is we're in a great position to win our goal, which is to win a Supporters' Shield and win a MLS championship. The only thing I can tell you is what's in front of us, and what's in front of us now is we have a big game," Klopas said.
"We have a special group of guys. It's a group of guys that believe in this organization. They care about this organization, and they want to win. That's the one thing I hope everybody understands because it's right there. We have the players to do it."
Help wanted: The Fire signed David Myrie on Tuesday to take the roster spot opened by Bakary Soumare's departure.
Klopas was trying to work out a way to sign the young Costa Rican by Tuesday's 5 p.m. deadline, but it took time to get his club in Costa Rica to waive his rights.
That was settled less than two hours before the deadline. Whether he's available for selection for Sunday's game depends on when the Fire receives Myrie's paperwork.
Klopas said Myrie is athletic and plays right midfield and right back, where he could fill in for the injured Tim Ward.
Myrie played on his country's U-20 national team. He has been on trial with the Fire for a couple of weeks.
Klopas said he has been "on the phone constantly" over the last week trying to get the deal done.
Will McBride be back?: Last week Fire forward Brian McBride said it's up to ownership whether he returns to play in 2010.
"For me he's proven if he wants to play one more year, he can play and help the team," Klopas said of the Arlington Heights resident. "- The guy can still play at a high level."
Both sides are happy to wait until the off-season to work out the details, however. There's something else they're concentrating on between now and the end of November.
oschwarz@dailyherald.com