BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. – Head coach Frank Yallop was left to rue a series of missed chances, but insisted the Chicago Fire’s focus remained on staying “positive” and “confident” after their second defeat of the season, a late 1-0 reversal to the Vancouver Whitecaps Saturday.
Following the 2-0 opening day defeat at the LA Galaxy, coupled with Vancouver’s 3-1 loss to Toronto FC, both sides were eager for a victory. And as you’d expect, both pressed forward with expected gusto, but wayward finishing from both sides saw the game enter the closing minutes scoreless. That was until Steven Beitashour capitalized on a poor headed clearance from Lovel Palmer to tee up Octavio Rivero for a deserved game-winning goal with four minutes to go to send the majority of the 15,731 inside Toyota Park home deflated.
“Obviously [it is] not the result that I or the club wanted on our opening night, but progress-wise and performance-wise I thought we played some decent stuff against a team that was the counterattacking style team that we knew they would be,” Yallop told reporters at the post-match press conference.
As the team’s misfiring attack continued their lack of productivity in front of goal, with no goals to date in the regular season fixtures, Yallop believes staying confident will help the team find their goalscoring touch.
“It’s a work in progress with what we’re doing and trying to make sure that we stay confident and stay positive with everything we’re trying to do,” he added. “I think a lot of times scoring comes when you are confident as a team and you can play for 90 minutes and I think that’s still to come.”
The Fire bossed possession for the majority of the game and squandered a couple of excellent looks to break the deadlock, especially through Joevin Jones, Michael Stephens and Harry Shipp. However, they also worryingly left gaping holes at the back, especially in the second half after rookie Matt Polster was substituted, and it seemed only a matter of time before the visitors would break through their rearguard.
With forwards David Accam and Mike Magee still out injured and Kennedy Igboananike and Guly do Prado starting on the bench, Quincy Amarikwa was left to shoulder the load and to his credit looked dangerous up top on his own, ably supported by Shipp, Jones and Stephens throughout, with new Designated Player Shaun Maloney still getting up to speed.
That said, Yallop is not overly worried about the lack of killer instinct in front of goal, and looked at the positives from the evening’s efforts.
“We always want to try and score goals, we are trying to, but I think it was the finishing rather than the actual play building up to the chances we had [that let us down],” Yallop added. “I think [Jones] should have scored first half when he had a good chance, Mikey Stephens should probably have done better, but again you can’t make guys finish chances, you’ve just got to create them and keep believing that we’re going to score.”
