Chicago Fire visited Columbus Crew at Lower. com Field, the ex-house of boss Gregg Berhalter.
The Chicago Fire’ s first game under Gregg Berhalter was very entertaining. Chicago scored two great goals in semi-transition when Jonathan Bamba and Brian Gutiérrez were great. And conceded two classics with Carlos Terán pot the most remarkable own goal, and saw the Crew take control with some excellent adjustments:
Farsi dropped deeper at about the 25th minute to stop Bamba from getting in behind and Sean Zawadzki pressed higher, which caused Chicago all sorts of problems. Fire fans were pretty jazzed about this performance, even with a loss. Berhalter, however, smelled a result and was pissed not to get it:“ I think the goals, basically we gave them three goals, right? That ' s tough. That ' s tough,” he said in the presser.“ But the positives of it are we created a number of chances. If we limit [ the errors ], we ' re right in
Gregg Berhalter this game, potentially winning the game.”
New manager Gregg Berhalter encouraged his team to defend with aggression both in a high press and in a compact 4-3-3 mid-block – to the point where they even managed to fluster Wilfried Nancy’ s Crew team at times. In possession, Berhalter clearly instructed his players to control the ball with short passes in their own half while looking for space to release new Designated Player left winger Jonathan Bamba.
… and then, they crumbled. Playing out of the back went wrong multiple times. Continued defensive aggression turned into poorly executed tactics. Adjustments were slow to arrive after Nancy tweaked his team’ s positioning midway through the first half.
The Crew got a bit of help from Chicago just kind of … passing them the ball on two goals and contributing an own goal on another, but still looked dangerous in attack in their first game without Cucho.
Diego Rossi scored twice to reach 100 career MLS goal contributions and Jacen Russell-Rowe added one
Diego Rossi
The Wilfried Nancy-led team is showing limitations after the departure of superstar striker Cucho Hernández.
Columbus will spend to bring in a replacement, but it ' s unclear when they find a solution. It’ s the first time in a long time there are actual concerns with a Nancy-led team.
GOALNEWS 12