Unicorns & Rainbows: Fire finish dominant preseason with 4-1 win over Toronto

My wife’s game story:

“We owned that shit!

“Will it continue?

“Let’s hope so.

“The End.”

The Fire crushed TFC 4-1 in today’s preseason finale.

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An earlier version of this story omitted the details of the game, motivated by the idea that we’ve surely been here before, haven’t we? We’ve seen teams that look hungry and interested in preseason, only to have the the hunger turn the Fire hangry, and the interest squelched by rising fear and confusion. We’ve won preseason awards year after year, only to surrender every bit of that momentum within 90 minutes of football.

None of which takes the gloss off a dominant performance by the downtrodden Men in Red against last season’s Eastern Conference champions. Juninho’s scorching golazo in the 9th minute set the tone, and the Fire’s intelligent movement and defensive pressure kept Toronto on the back foot throughout the first half.

Key to that dominant first half was the play of Michael de Leeuw, who won a penalty in the 15th (finished by Nemanja Nikolic) and essentially sealed the victory in the 39th by tapping in at the back post following a sharp passing sequence from David Accam and Nikolic. De Leeuw added a second goal after halftime, running onto a wayward pass and finishing neatly from 17 yards to make the score 4-0.

It was lovely - but was it real? We start to answer that question in seven short days. Until then, believe in unicorns, Fire nation. Believe in rainbows. Sometimes good things do happen.

The Fire open the season next Saturday in Columbus, with kickoff scheduled for 1 p.m. on CSN Chicago.