DC United traveled to the windy city to face off against the Chicago Fire looking for an important three points to help boost them farther up the Eastern Conference table. Unfortunately, they were only able to grab one point after a 1-1 draw with the Fire on a night when things just didn’t seem to go right at all.
Chicago came out “on fire” (pun intended) dominating possession and testing DC keeper Bill Hamid early in the match. With some nice passing, excellent free kicks, and some well placed shots, Chicago had DC on the wire early on. Hamid was forced to come up with some big saves to keep the score at 0-0. After about 20 minutes, DC was able to settle down and get into the groove. The first test for Chicago keeper Sean Johnson came in the 41st minute when he deflected multiple DC shots. Although offside was called during the shots, it was great to see a little action from the offense. It all seemed to be heading uphill until Hamid went down with a hamstring injury seconds before halftime and struggled to make it back to the locker room when the whistle blew. The second half saw Chicago draw first blood with a great volley from Sebastian Grazzini off an attempted clearance from the DC defense. The 1-0 lead for Chicago was able to stand for about 15 minutes until a Santino Quaranta pass made it past the Chicago defense and to the feet of Josh Wolff who roofed it past Johnson to equalize making it 1-1. The result stood and Chicago earned their league record 15th tie of the year.
Najar and Pontius had decent nights, but the disappointing night award has to go to Charlie Davies, who was mainly a non-factor the entire time he was on the pitch. He has certainly entered a cold streak after starting the season off with a bang. Wolff has made his case to start over Davies with a solid performance that saw him score his fifth goal of the year. The injury to Bill Hamid will certainly be big news this week around RFK, and hopefully Joe Willis will be able to travel with the team to Kansas City otherwise DC will be looking at going into the match with only one keeper. Steven Goff posted the idea on Twitter of Pat Onstad coming out of retirement again, but I would be surprised if that happened. Hopefully Hamid’s injury isn’t serious enough to keep him out for a long period of time, but we’ll find out more in the next few days.
Drawing 15 times in a year means that Chicago is a hard team to put away, but still the stats don’t lie. Chicago has not won a match at home since March 26th (against KC), they are last place in Eastern Conference, and they only have two wins this season. This was a match that DC needed to win and get three points from, but a slow start and an unfortunate keeper injury to Hamid derailed that plan. This will make Sunday’s match against Sporting KC even more important as DC will now need a full three points to stay in the running for the playoff spots. Another draw, or worse a defeat, could result in the season ending with DC on the outside looking in, much like the 2008 and 2009 seasons. I’m sure all DC fans can agree with me when I say another year outside of the playoffs will be a tough pill to swallow.
(image courtesy of dcunited.com)
