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Chicago Fire 10 Questions: DaMarcus Beasley | Coachspeak: Bob Bradley
Posted: Saturday March 11, 2000 09:14 PM
By Jeff Diecks, CNNSI.com Put Chris Armas on Peter Nowak's shoulders and together the two might surpass Lubos Kubik in height. But put Chicago's two midfield bulldogs together with its towering central defender on the field and the result is the strongest central combination in MLS. Nowak shows a willingness to track back on defense not commonly seen among his fellow elite MLS playmakers, and Armas, perhaps the league's top defensive midfielder, has gained newfound confidence on offense while playing with the U.S. national team. Together, the two patrol almost the entire field. The formula of Nowak, Armas, Kubik and goalkeeper Zach Thornton helped propel Chicago to the MLS title in 1998, the Fire's expansion season. The Fire's defense somehow found room to improve in 1999, as the club allowed 19 fewer goals in the regular season.
Looking back on 1999, Burn coach Dave Dir said the Fire would have beaten L.A. in the conference finals and repeated its championship had it not run into his Dallas club, featuring red-hot striker Ariel Graziani, in a tough three-game first-round series. "That's a nice comment by Dave," Fire coach Bob Bradley said. "I think from our end we felt good about the way we were playing at the end of the year. We felt we were peaking at the right time. We had a hard-fought, excellent series with Dallas." Determined not to face a prolonged downhill slide following the peak, Chicago has moved to reshape pieces of its roster in the offseason. Gone are aging internationals Jerzy Podbrozny and Roman Kosecki. In one of their places, the Fire could be fielding a player that is half their age: 17-year-old DaMarcus Beasley. Beasley, a Project-40 player acquired in an offseason trade with the Los Angeles Galaxy, made enough of an impression at the FIFA Under-17 World Championship and with the Fire in spring training to earn a call-up to the full U.S. national team for its friendly against Tunisia in March.
Beasley will have to finish high school before becoming available for full-time duty with the Fire in May. But don't expect Bradley to wait much longer than that before he unleashes Beasley's speed and dribbling skills. "We don't hold back guys," Bradley said. "We've not decided that now he's a year or two years away. We think he's a good player right now." Bradley has already shown a willingness to play promising youngsters, such as forward Josh Wolff. The 23-year-old has already appeared in 42 regular-season games and scored 18 goals in two seasons with the Fire. Wolff, however, is coming back from a torn left ACL, suffered while practicing the now-defunct MLS shootout in a Fire training session on Sept. 21. Ante Razov joins Wolff up top to give Chicago two strikers from the U.S. national team pool. Following two years on the bench in Los Angeles, Razov came to the Fire as a non-roster invitee at spring training in 1998, and he has gone on to lead the team in scoring the past two seasons with 10 goals in 1998 and 14 last year. The club has also been chasing retired Bulgarian striker Hristo Stoichkov, a former FIFA World Footballer of the Year. But the combination of contract negotiations with MLS and the Fire's need to trade for an allocation to permit the addition of Stoichkov has stalled the process. Also at forward, Chicago has signed Manuel "Junior" Agogo, a Ghanian-born British citizen who spent time with Sheffield Wednesday's organization in the English Premier League. The Fire added Agogo as a discovery player after he put together an impressive spring training with the club. In midfield, second-year Indiana product Dema Kovalenko figures to see more playing time in a group that includes veterans Nowak, Armas, Diego Gutierrez and Jesse Marsch. Defenders Kubik, C.J. Brown and Francis Okaroh anchor the backline, with Carlos Bocanegra and Evan Whitfield being groomed for future roles. Zach Thornton, who carries a 1.27 career goals-against average, suffered a torn right calf muscle in the preseason. Second-year backup Greg Sutton may be pressed into action early in the season while Thornton recovers.
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