When things are going well, all the breaks seems to go your way. Just ask the Fire.
Saturday the Fire faced a team depleted because of World Cup duty and had a goal against it wiped out by a foul. The result was a fifth-straight victory for the Fire, 2-0, over the Columbus Crew in front of 19,801 at Soldier Field.
The Fire caught a Crew team that has four starters in France with the U.S. national team, but Fire coach Bob Bradley isn’t sympathetic.
“I’ve said it before, games come very quickly and there are injuries and situations that you have no control over,” Bradley said. “It was the same last year with World Cup qualifiers and obviously worse this year. I’m hoping for the day that we have four U.S. national team players.”
The Fire (7-5) got on the board early. Frank Klopas played the ball to Jerzy Podbrozny down the right sideline, Podbrozny then crossed in front of the net. Ante Razov dove for it and missed. The ball bounded right to Richie Kotschau, who scored in the eighth minute.
“What was going through my mind was the play in Miami,” said Kotschau, who had a similar play in the season-opener and sent it over the crossbar. “I just told myself I was going to put this one away.”
The Fire defense, tops in Major League Soccer, held Columbus (7-6) and dangerous forward Stern John to just one shot on goal, which came in the 84th minute and was easily handled by goalkeeper Zach Thornton. For Thornton, the shutout was his league-leading fourth.
“Tonight was the first game where I thought we were beaten by a team that was better than us,” Columbus head coach Tom Fitzgerald said. “Chicago was the better team tonight.”
Fitzgerald thought his team had tied the game at 1-1 in the 50th minute. Stern John scored off a corner kick, but the Crews’ Todd Yeagley was whistled for a foul before the shot.
“I didn’t see the foul,” Thornton said. “I thought it was a goal. We got lucky on that one.”
Two minutes later, Peter Nowak stole a backpass from Yeagley, cut to the left of the box and shot back toward the right past Crew keeper Mark Dougherty.
The teams meet again on July 9 in Columbus.
