CHICAGO (Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014) – The Chicago Fire (5-7-16, 31 points) drew D.C. United (14-9-6, 48 points) 3-3 at Toyota Park on Saturday evening. Quincy Amarikwa opened scoring in the 16th minute with his team-leading eighth goal before Jeff Larentowicz buried his penalty kick in the 32nd minute as the Fire got on the board first. The visitors took the lead with a brace from Luis Silva and a 68th minute goal by Bobby Boswell before Matthew Watson equalized in the 78th minute as the Men in Red earned a point off the Eastern Conference leaders.
Next up the Fire head to the Lone Star State for their first match of the season against the Houston Dynamo at BBVA Compass Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. CT (UniMas/La Ley 107.9 FM).
MATCH REPORT: http://bit.ly/1AYARW6
MATCH HIGHLIGHTS: http://bit.ly/1qVKOUg
Quotes:
Chicago Fire Head Coach and Director of Soccer Frank Yallop
On struggling to finish the game out
“If you look at the first goal for them, I don’t see the call, for one. The second goal is not a foul; the free kick is fantastic, take nothing away from the kick. But those things change games. Yes, we can’t hang on to a lead but I thought we played well tonight. I thought we deserved to win, but we didn’t. You probably have a different view. For me, we deserved to win that, because two calls go against us in the match that cost us the game. Momentum is everything; we’re two goals up, they get a phantom penalty kick, I don’t know what the call is. So they go 2-1, they’ve got life. He gives them another foul that was not a foul, I’ll show you it. Razvan [Cocis] wins the ball, pokes it away, gives a foul to a good player in a good spot; great free kick area for a great finisher like [Luis] Silva is, and he likes that, and they score. Third goal, I’ll live with that one, but we’re on the ropes at that point. So it’s tough.”
On moving forward
“We’re going to keep going, we’ll keep fighting, we’ll keep doing our things. We’ve tied 16 games; maybe we should have some more points out of that. But I keep saying, the table doesn’t lie. We’re in the position that we are because of us not being able to see games out or put the game away. I think it was twofold tonight. The calls didn’t go really our way tonight, and that’s being kind. We didn’t really see the game out. At 3-2, though, we come back and got an equalizer, and probably looked more likely to score and get the winner. I was pleased with some aspects of our games; but the big one is that we only got one point.”
On positives to take away
“Quincy [Amarikwa] had a good goal; our energy was good from the start. I thought that we looked like we wanted to win the game. On the front third, we did some great stuff. I thought our set plays were excellent; we always look dangerous on those. We dominated most of the game. You know, D.C. are a good side, we know that; they’re going to come into the game at some point in the match. We just had to dig in and make sure they didn’t get a hold on the game; they were given holds on the game, which I didn’t like. I think, as a team, you have to make sure the players know that. We’re trying our best to weather the storm. At halftime, I said, ‘I don’t know what the penalty was called for, but it was being called with 2-1. So we have to make sure we come out and do our thing.’ We tried to do that, but we got another call that doesn’t go our way. But at least we came back, and looked more likely to score at the end, which is good.”
On tying a record for most draws in a single season
“It’s okay if you get ten wins and sixteen ties, but in the position we’re in, we need wins. I think the big thing is, you have to build on the positives; we’re difficult to beat, but we don’t win games. It’s a fine line, but it’s one we have to work on. We have to make sure come next season, and obviously the end of this season, we can put those things correct. That’s a big thing for us. When you lose seven games, it always looks good, but you have to have the wins to go with it.”
On not conceding the season
“I have players on the bench to make the difference in Flo [Sinama-Pongolle] and Ernie [Robert Earnshaw], to come off the bench, Patrick [Nyarko] too. It’s three attacking options I had, that we used. It’s not easy for a player that’s been in France trying to get his visa to come in and look good right away; Ernie’s been injured for two and a half weeks, so he’s a little bit behind as well. But those guys are dangerous, they’re good players. It’s not a concession at all; it’s an attempt to try to win the match. Again, I’d say that we were pushing towards that, trying to get that last touch in that last 5-10 minutes of the game to win it. It takes time for guys to settle, but I still feel good that the guys gave me everything they had tonight.”
On Harry Shipp’s performance
“Harry did well. As normal things happen to young players, he took a little bit of a dip, and lost the way a bit. I thought Harry did well tonight; I think he was dangerous, he had a good finish well-saved by [Bill] Hamid, and after that, I think he picked his game up and was good. In the game, we’re just trying to change things with bringing him out, but I thought he had a good showing tonight for sure.
Chicago Fire goalkeeper Sean Johnson
On the record tying draw
“The record reflects how our season has been, if we have half the amount of ties as we have we’d be in first place or somewhere close. We’ve lost less games than the team in first place, so that’s tough to deal with. We still have a fighting chance and we have to go down fighting – if we have any chance to save the season we have to go after it.”
On positives and negatives of the result:
“It’s a little bit positive and negative that we couldn’t hold the lead, obviously you never want to give up a two goal lead, especially given that the other two goal lead we had this season was to Real Salt Lake and we let that one slip away 3-2, you never want that to happen. Then again, tying it up shows our fighting spirit, we’re a never say die team – that’s our attitude which allowed us to tie it up. On the night, I thought we deserved to win, we played well enough. There were some unfortunate bounces here and there, but I think we definitely deserved to win. ”
Chicago Fire forward Quincy Amarikwa
On the team’s performance:
“We did what we needed to do as a team, I thought we defended really well. Some unlucky calls didn’t go our way, and that was what resulted in them jumping back into the game, but overall as a team I think that was one of our better performances collectively over 90 minutes and you could see the result from the guys at the end.”
On his performance:
“Statistically it was one of my better performances of the year; but we’ve been working really hard as a team and I think it’s paying off because you can see chemistry amongst the guys. Everyone is joining in and helping each other on and off the ball. I think that makes my job easier up front when we play like that, and it gives me the opportunity to finish the balls when they come inside. I think overall it’s just a good performance from everybody.”
On his feelings accepting a draw after a good performance:
“Dropping points is always hard to swallow. Everyone wants to win every game, we’re all competitive, that’s what we’re here for – that’s our job and livelihood. To come out with a point is good, but we’ve got to get some wins with this playoff push. We’re really close and I think we’re going to squeeze in there come the end of the season.”
On what he was asking the referee after the call leading to the D.C. penalty kick:
“I had a discussion with him. I wanted to know if he was calling the penalty on Sean [Johnson] for coming out and being strong in the box or if he calling it on something he saw that Baky [Soumare] did. It’s a tough gig being a ref, you can never be right and everyone’s mad at you. I would have liked things to go our way, but what can you do? He said from his first impression that, that he thought Baky came in with his elbow a bit high. It was pretty crowded in the box there, the only way to know for sure is to go back and look at the tape.“
Chicago Fire 3 – 3 D.C. United
Chicago Fire:apple-converted-space"> Sean Johnson; Lovel Palmer, Jeff Larentowicz ©, Bakary Soumare, Gonzalo Segares; Grant Ward (Florent Sinama-Pongolle 63’), Razvan Cocis, Matthew Watson, Harry Shipp (Robert Earnshaw 71’); Alex (Patrick Nyarko 63’), Quincy Amarikwa
Substitutes not used: Kyle Reynish, Patrick Ianni, Logan Pause, Matt Fondy
D.C. United: Bill Hamid; Bobby Boswell ©, Steve Birnbaum, Sean Franklin, Taylor Kemp; Davy Arnaud, Samuel Inkoom (Chris Korb 46’), Perry Kitchen, Nick DeLeon; Michael Seaton (Chris Pontius 46’), Luis Silva (Collin Martin 83’)
Substitutes not used: Joe Willis, Lewis Neal, Kofi Opare, Jared Jeffrey
Scoring Summary
CHI – Quincy Amarikwa (Harry Shipp) 16’
CHI – Jeff Larentowicz (penalty kick) 32’
DC – Luis Silva (penalty kick) 39’
DC – Luis Silva (unassisted) 54’
CHI – Matthew Watson (Quincy Amarikwa) 78’
Misconduct Summary
DC – Perry Kitchen (caution) 31’
CHI – Razvan Cocis (caution) 45’
DC – Nick DeLeon (caution) 65’
CHI – Lovel Palmer (caution) 90+’
Referee: Fotis Bazakos
Assistants: Fabio Tovar, Gianni Facchini
Fourth Official: Armando Villareal
Attendance: 17,279
