Waiting for Blanco (to start playing),A memo to the Chicago Fire New Coach

To: Juan Carlos Osorio

From: Don Mac Gregor

Re: Saving the rest of the season after the All-Star break.

Coach, first of all, welcome to the team. I was going to suggest that before each game you should hypnotize the team into believing they are playing MKS Cracovia again. If you saw the inspired, if rough play against the Polish visitors you’d be amazed. However I am reminded of the words of Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the ridiculous, you are stuck with the practical.”

OK, so it wasn’t an exact quote, but I think you understand my sentiments. I want to talk to you about establishing team stability, personnel consistency and variety in the Fire’s attack. Let’s start off with stability.

It’s no fun working for a company that’s the subject of takeover rumors. I work for a company that was taken over by a multinational. It was an upsetting experience for a lot of long time employees. Who would stay? Who would be forced to move on? People would talk. People would speculate. People would upset themselves with speculation and lose focus.

All media -print and electronic – are filled with pesky talk about AEG’s sale of the team. Not thinking about the Chicago Fire’s future is like trying not to imagine Abel Xavier with a shocking pink hairdo flecked with purple polka dots, and a road hazard orange beard.

You can’t stop people from speculating, after work, but while your players are on the practice field and in the locker room, there should be a “no speculation rule”. Get every player to focus on the things they can control – their performance. Whatever happens with the team’s ownership shall happen. There’s nothing they can do until the end of the season. At least the players now know who their head coach is, now how about if they knew who was in their lineup?

I agree with my colleague John Schulz at Windy City Soccer, that the goalkeeping is solid, so I’ll move on to the defense. The Houston loss shows how dependent Chicago’s defense is on C.J. Brown. If a healthy Dasan Robinson doesn’t shore up on the defense, then you and John Guppy have to go out and buy someone next month. Jim Curtin can’t do everything back there.

I have nothing to say about the midfield except KEEP JUSTIN MAPP on the inside. Your predecessor had Mapp on the wing hopelessly hoofing the ball to a heading-challenged Nate Jaqua for half the season. Then Mapp moved inside, and started scoring. There’s one other thing to remember: Mapp is a very energetic MIDFIELDER-not a forward. Let us now move on to Chad Barrett and his rotating cast of forward partners. Who should they be?

The forward partnership should be Chad Barrett and …someone who starts with Chad every game. You may want to put Chris Rolfe back in front when he’s recovered. I’d like to see another big man. When Jerson Montiero gets healthy, put him in for the rest of the season. We need another big man up front who won’t get knocked off the ball in the same way that Toronto’s Marvell Wynne shouldered Calen Carr out of his way. Whether you pencil in Rolfe or Montiero Chad Barett needs a strike partner whose characteristics he knows, and with whom he can work with game after game. Barrett and his teammates also have to know when to give up on hoofing the ball down the field. This brings me to the subject of variety in offense, and in particular, short passes.

If you saw the second half of the MKS Cracovia game, you saw the visitors slither through our defense with a serpentine series of short passes. Our defense was able to blunt their final attack, but Cracovia demonstrated how a quick series of well executed short passes can advance the ball up the pitch. Contrast this with the recent Houston match where the Chicago consistently sent in centering crosses to the head of-oops- Houston’s Craig Waibel. Watch that Houston game again Coach, and plan for more short-pass drills during practice. QUICK short passes.

Good luck with integrating Cuauhtémoc Blanco into your plans. I don’t know if we can make it to the playoffs, but stability, consistency and variety in attack should get us off the bottom of the standings.