In a league where travel is so important and vast amounts of miles have to be crossed to get to the next game, What happened to the Montreal Impact midweek is both amazing and tragic.

Montreal was scheduled to play the New England Revolution on Wednesday night; and they did. They won handily, 3-0 against a Revs team that looked sad and pathetic and put up almost no defense of their home.

However, there was some drama getting to the game at all. MLS has strict rules re:flights. MLS Clubs are only allowed to take four chartered flights per year. So, when Montreal’s flight was finally canceled after five hours of being delayed, the organization had to burn one of the four chartered flights. They finally reaching Boston the morning of the game, leaving precious few hours to get mentally and physically prepared- something that is nearly impossible after spending five plus hours stuck in an airport.

The big question is “Why wasn’t the game postponed?” When asked to go on record to The Globe and Mail an anonymous source with the league said that they reviewed everything, and found that they wouldn’t have been impacted (no pun intended) by the delay.

It turns out that they were correct. However, the game still should have been postponed. It wasn’t fair for the Montreal players to be subjected to 5 hours of airport wait time, and frankly, unfair for players to have to fly commercial at all. They shouldn’t have to deal with the five year old with the chicken pox or that guy with a cold in seat 54 A.

MLS needs to look at their travel policies closely, and fix these things. No one got hurt this time, but when the inevitable does, and someone tears an ACL, there will be hell to pay.

Chicago Fire all-time MLS record vs Impact de Montréal: 6W-5D-7L, 25 GF / 24 GA, 23 pts out of 54

Chicago Fire away MLS record vs Impact de Montréal: 2W-2D-6L, 11 GF / 16 GA, 8 pts out of 30

Previously on…

There last five matches are DDWLW with there last two games finishing with the scoreline 3-0, one in each direction.

Suggested Lineup

Both Frankie and Katai are listed as questionable. One of them should start. I picked Frankowski simply because he played on Wednesday and Katai did not.

Keys To The Match

Forget Wednesday: Wednesday was an aberration. They got beat because of a break that caused by the pitch. The fire need to forget about it and move on.

Push up: The Fire should be more aggressive, especially where their defensive line is placed. This is not one of those bunker and counter kind of games, and the Fire really aren’t a bunker and counter type of team. They need to boss the midfield and control the tempo, and that starts with playing higher up the field.

Take advantage of No Piatti: As of Friday morning, Ignacio Piatti is still listed as being out with a knee injury. The Fire don’t have to work around him defensively, which means they should have an easier time in that part of the game. This means the Fire can concentrate more on getting after it. They need to play with urgency and get the first goal of the game.

How To Watch

Television:NA

Streaming: ESPN+

Final Thoughts

It’s an 11:30 AM kickoff? Oh Jesus. I am picking the Fire to win this one, but I’m not that confident. I’m going to say 2-1.