The Chicago Fire’s US Open Cup run came to a disappointing end on Wednesday night, as the club was bounced from the semifinals of the tournament after a 1-0 loss at the Philadelphia Union.
The Fire struggled to generate anything in the attack and fell victim to a 74th minute winner from the Union’s Sebastian Le Toux in what Chicago head coach Frank Yallop called an “alarming and disappointing" performance in Wednesday’s semifinal.
Over 130 Fire fans made the 1,500-mile round trip to watch their club bow out of the tournament with a poor performance in which they lacked cohesion, purpose and conviction in most areas of the field.
The defeat ended perhaps the best chance the Fire had of collecting silverware for the first time since their US Open Cup victory in 2006, as the Men in Red remain rooted to the foot of the Eastern Conference table with 12 regular season games to play. A playoff run is still a possibility, but the Fire have some serious work to do to climb into the playoff places, needing to pass four teams and make up six points to move into the top-six in the East.
“Very disappointing,” a dejected Yallop told reporters after the game. “I think we had a couple of spells in the first half, and a few parts of the game, but in general we were outplayed tonight, which is very alarming and disappointing.
“We needed to get up for the game, I felt training was good, we talked about it, you’ve got to go out and perform and give it everything you have and it didn’t seem like we did that. It’s a tough one to take because it’s a semifinal and a performance like that is not good.”
The Fire were second best for much of the 90 minutes, failing to really trouble Union goalkeeper John McCarthy and finishing the match with just two shots on target. At the other end, the Union forced Sean Johnson into a number of excellent saves, especially in the first half, before Le Toux notched the winner 16 minutes from the final whistle.
“Tonight, from five minutes of the opening whistle we couldn’t string two passes together,” Yallop said. “We defended well, I thought we were slow on a lot of stuff and didn’t create anything. If you have that type of performance you don’t get much out of it.”
Designated Player Shaun Maloney, who has been the subject of an increased bid from English Championship club Hull City this week, rejected any assertion that the players didn’t give their all on the night, but did call the performance “unorganized.”
“I think everyone tried, in my opinion, every player tried and gave his all,” the Scot told reporters. “I think it’s been the case all season, I don’t think there’s been one player that hasn’t given his all in the game. I think there were times out there where we were quite disjointed and unorganized, and that’s what it felt like out there, and perhaps from the side it looks as though that was a lack of effort. But I can absolutely tell you that wasn’t the case.”
New DP signing Gilberto limped out of his debut appearance with what the club called a thigh contusion in the 21st minute, and will be a doubt for the Fire when they face the Union again – this time in league play – on Sunday. A win in that match could leapfrog the Fire above the Union and New York City FC into the eighth spot, and Yallop insisted that he’ll be reviewing this defeat as they go in search of their first win on the road since last July – a run of 20 games in all competitions.
“Everyone’s devastated in there with the result so it’s going to be a tough one but we’ve got a game Sunday that we’ve got to get ourselves ready for and get up for,” Yallop said. “Sunday’s going to come quickly, we’ve just got to get ourselves ready for that and pick the bones out of this one because it wasn’t good.”
