BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. – The writing was on the wall as early as the seventh minute, as the Chicago Fire’s Audi 2017 MLS Cup Playoff ambitions were quickly and ruthlessly destroyed by the New York Red Bulls at Toyota Park on Wednesday night.
Seven minutes was all it took for the visitors to expose the frailties in the Fire’s backline and punish some errant defending to allow Bradley Wright-Phillips to slot home the opening goal. The second arrived just four minutes later from Sacha Kljestan, assisted by more wayward marking by the Fire in the box.
From that point, there was no coming back for the Fire. The Red Bulls pressed on for an eventual 4-0 win, ending the Fire’s once-promising season on the sourest of notes. Despite the significant improvement made on the 2016 last-place finish, there was no escaping the disappointment in the Fire locker room after the match.
"I think the better team won, plain and simple,” Fire captain and former Red Bulls midfielder Dax McCarty said postgame. “I thought we got outplayed all over the field. I mean, that's a team that's been battle-tested in the playoffs now for five, six years. They've experienced a lot of hard games, a lot of tough games in the playoffs, they've experienced a lot of disappointment in the playoffs. We aren't quite there yet.”
The Fire were done in by their brutal start to the match. They didn’t merely concede twice in the first 15 minutes, they didn’t look up for a match with Wednesday’s magnitude.
“I thought we started the game really poorly, gave up some unfortunate goals, lost one of the best goal-scorers in the league one-on-one on the first goal,” McCarty said. “I think the second goal was a little bit too easy, cross and a finish. Put yourself in a hole 2-0, it's always going to be tough to come back against a team like that but we tried, we tried. The backbreaker third goal, turnover by myself in the midfield and they score; always going to have a hard time coming back from 3-0 after that. I don't think we can have any arguments about the result. It's unfortunate we didn't play well and they played very well, so the better team won and that's how it goes sometimes."
Head coach Veljko Paunovic took full responsibility for his team’s early exit from their first playoff campaign since 2012, which also ended with a home loss in the Knockout Round.
“It’s my fault,” Paunovic said. “If there is somebody to blame, it is my fault because I think we all could do better.”
“We are sorry that we couldn’t progress to the next round, it was a very difficult game for us to start, conceding two goals in the first 15 minutes,” he added. “It’s tough in playoffs, it’s tough to matchup and get back. Obviously in the second half we had to risk a little bit more and the feat was tougher and bigger, but not because of the lack of preparation, we ran like hell today, not because of lack of talent, we are all proud of our guys. We are so, so happy with the talent that we have and I’m proud of and grateful to all the guys for the effort they did during the whole season.”
While 2017 ended on a disappointing note for the Fire, McCarty saw enough from the team’s third-place regular season finish to look optimistically toward next season. If they’re able to bring back out-of-contract Bastian Schweinsteiger and some of their other key pieces, he feels Chicago will be in a good place in 2018.
"I think you see all the best teams in the league, they've been together for a number of years,” McCarty said. ”This is a team that's relatively new, a lot of new faces this year. I think that even though tonight is really frustrating, we can be proud of the season that we did have, the regular season, but they don't hand out trophies for doing really well in the regular season and making the playoffs.
“I think another year together will be good for us, hopefully we bring back a good core of this group because there's a lot of talent here, there's a lot of good players. We just need to, maybe we need to go through a little bit of failure so we can come back stronger next year."
Shane Murray is a contributor to MLSsoccer.com.
