New England Revolution vs. Chicago Fire: Windy City Live Game Thread

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Chicago Fire live game thread, on a Sunday afternoon in September because whomever is in charge of scheduling for MLS should be fired and blackballed from the industry for the rest of his or her born days. You would think that someone over there would have looked at the schedule and said "You know, putting two of the worst teams in MLS up against a full slate of NFL games might be bad for ratings," but apparently that level of reasoning is absent in Garberville. Whatever, at least the Pats game will be almost over in time for kickoff.

New England is coming off a tough 3-0 loss to Portland last week that went a long way toward completely deflating spirits that had been rising a bit after the 2-0 win over Dallas. The Revs are going to have to do much better today if they have any hope of moving on from a performance where they honestly looked like they didn't even want to be on the field. Portland pinned them in their own area and it felt like no one in Revolution colors had any intention of making a run forward.

Chicago, meanwhile, put in an encouraging performance in a 3-2 victory over Chivas USA last weekend and are still in a realistic position to push for the playoffs, which is more than can be said for the Revs. Led by born-again (not in the religious sense, I think) striker Dominic Oduro's red-hot scoring form, the Fire are piecing it together and will be especially motivated to beat New England. Both teams are well-acquainted with each other, with the Revs having knocked the Fire out of the playoffs a number of times in the last decade as both teams were perennial contenders in the Eastern Conference.

Remember, we're doing that new format for this live thread. Lineups are up next, and then after the jump you'll find the embedded live blog.

Lineups

Revolution: Reis; Tierney, Barnes, Coria, Alston; Mansally, Feilhaber, Joseph, Guy; Schilawski, Caraglio

Bench: Shuttleworth, Loewy, Dube, Fagundez, Phelan, Boggs, Kinne

Fire: Johnson; Gargan, Mikulic, Anibaba, Segares; Pappa, Pardo, Pause, Grazzini; Oduro, Nyarko

Bench: Conway, Cuesta, Bone, Husidic, Paladini, Barouch, Chaves