Aimless Metro ambushed by the Fire, 2:1
August 8, 2021
Four days ago, when Metro was slogging through a home scoreless draw with bottom-feeding Cincinnati, we questioned our sanity in writing these game summaries. Why do we keep doing it, we asked ourselves?
Well, here is why. Let's say a few years down the road, someone decides to take a look back in this game. Perhaps they'll be clicking through this website's archive, or maybe the game comes up in "This Day in Metro" rotation. 2:1, the headline will read. 2:1! It must have been a close game!
A close game it was not. This game was put to bed two minutes in, when the Fire scored. And six minutes later, it pretty much became official.
NO! NO! NO! Don't look at that final score. The Metro goal came on the last kick of the ball, a Tom Barlow rebound off a free kick seven minutes into injury time. Metro spent the previous hour and a half buried, submerged, gasping for air, out of ideas how to climb back up. The game was over in the eight minute, final scored be damned.
How bad was it? Gerhard Struber benched Cristian Casseres just 19 minutes in. 19! Casseres' lazy defending led to the first goal, a blast from outside the box. On the second, off a long throw-in, he left a man unmarked on the far post, and that was game.
But it's not all on Casseres. It's on the rest of his teammates, who could create nothing offensively. It's on Struber, who keeps going with the same lineup even when the results are not there. It's on Kevin Thelwell, whose flawed roster construction has not exactly made up for the mistakes of the previous regime. It's on Denis Hamlett, who is somehow employed, yet was that previous regime. It's on Red Bull, who the club into a also-ran, on and off the field.
That's why we write these game summaries.
Lineup: Coronel, Tolkin, Tarek, Edwards, Duncan, Davis, Casseres, Carmona, Clark, Klimala, Fabio. Subs: Gutman, Fernandez, Barlow.
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