What a strange week for the Fire.
It started with three games in a seven-day span in three different cities. At the end, it was hard to come away feeling too bad about a victory and two ties, but it’s also hard to be too happy about losing leads in two road matches in the final minutes.
“We’ve given away way too many points,” Fire coach Bob Bradley lamented Saturday after another two slipped away in a 1-1 draw with the San Jose Earthquakes. “We’ve had an awful lot of games where we felt we played well and could’ve and should’ve won the game and didn’t.”
The Fire again was victimized by an opponent’s corner kick in San Jose. This one came 90 seconds into stoppage time after goalkeeper Zach Thornton tipped a shot by Dario Brose over the goal line. Fire defender Carlos Bocanegra and San Jose forward Ian Russell battled for Richard Mulrooney’s corner kick and the ball fell right to the foot of Russell, who sent his shot past Thornton to even the match.
“When you get to those moments at the end of games, all those things that you organize before the game get thrown out the window,” Bradley said of the hectic final minutes. “They just send everybody. At that point in the game, it’s a matter of making a play and we didn’t do well enough.”
Bad luck and some big saves from San Jose goalkeeper Joe Cannon kept the Earthquakes in the match long enough. Ante Razov was stopped twice from point-blank range by Cannon and saw another shot carom off the crossbar.
As hard to swallow as the matches in Los Angeles–in which the Fire gave up a penalty in the 89th minute and finished with a 1-1 tie–and San Jose were, if someone had told Bradley that he would’ve gotten a win at home and two draws against teams that are good on their home field, he would have been satisfied, right? Not really.
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“I don’t know if I would have been happy,” Bradley said. “I’m not entirely happy at the end, and I don’t think anyone else is either.”
Quite an impact: Since Luis Hernandez joined the Los Angeles Galaxy, the offense has gone into hiding, Hernandez has yet to score, the Mexican fans that Hernandez was going to bring to the Rose Bowl have stayed home and the Galaxy has fallen nine points behind first-place Kansas City in the Western Division. All that for about $4 million.
If that isn’t enough, Hernandez said in a media conference call earlier in the week that he basically came to MLS for one reason: to audition himself to a European club.
Hernandez is apparently hoping that there is a market for a 31-year-old forward who hasn’t scored in nearly 500 minutes of play in a league widely ridiculed throughout the world.
Don’t believe the hype: There was a DaMarcus Beasley sighting Saturday in San Jose. The highly touted 17-year-old came on in the 76th minute for Diego Gutierrez. It was only the ninth match of the season for Beasley, who is finding it tough to crack the Fire lineup. One thing holding back Beasley is the man in front of him in the Fire midfield–Gutierrez. The Colombian-born Gutierrez has turned into one of the league’s better left-sided midfielders and is a tough defender and hard tackler, something Beasley isn’t. Although he hasn’t shown it in a game that counts, Beasley’s best skills still are offensive, and the Fire has enough problems defensively right now. While the rest of the Fire players will get some time off, Bradley said Beasley will likely play in some Project-40 matches this week.
Final four: The semifinal pairings are set for the European Championships. Italy will face the Netherlands on Thursday in Amsterdam while Portugal takes on France Wednesday in Brussels. The final is Sunday.
On Sunday, Patrick Kluivert scored a record four goals to lead the Netherlands past Yugoslavia 6-1 in Rotterdam. France, the 1998 World Cup winner, eliminated Spain 2-1 in Bruges, Belgium, when Raul’s penalty kick in the final minute sailed over the crossbar.