The Fire hosted Liga MX champion Club America at Toyota Park on Wednesday, though the atmosphere favored the Mexican club as their jerseys covered a majority of the stadium.
- Daniel Paladini opened the scoring in the nineteenth minute, assisted by Maicon Santos. America would then score three unanswered, including Luis Gabriel Rey took it unassisted in the twenty-fifth minute. America was awarded two questionable penalty kicks (while the Fire had not been awarded one at another key point in the match), as Christian Bermudez and Antonio Lopez converted in the sixty-third and eighty-third minutes, respectively.
- Sherjill MacDonald drew the Fire within one in the first minute of stoppage time, and Amarikwa had a chance to equalize after a late corner that proved to be the last game, but ended up on the ground and unable to make the play.
- Recently signed away from the Charlotte Eagles, Shaun Francis made his Chicago Fire debut and earned a yellow card caution in the fifty-first minute of play. Other yellow cards were issued to Daniel Paladini in the twenty-fourth minute, America’s Erik Pimentel, Paul Aguilar, and Jesus Leal in the thirty-first, thirty-fourth, and forty-first minutes, respectively.
- America used all of their available substitutions except for Hugo Gonzalez, while the Fire left seven regular starters on the bench: Bakary Soumare, Jalil Anibaba, Austin Berry, Patrick Nyarko, Jeff Larentowicz Mike Magee and Chris Rolfe. Alec Kann was also not used, and Yazid Atouba impressed after coming off the bench.
- Gonzalo Segares carried the captain’s armband until being taken out at half-time.
- The attendance was 20,042, a sellout of the stadium, and the largest crowd at Toyota Park this season. This figure does not count towards the Fire’s relatively low regular season average attendance.
The Fire return to regular season play on Sunday at 6:00 PM Central Time at B.C.Place against the Vancouver Whitecaps FC. B.C. Place was recently named the site of the 2014 Heritage Classic outdoor match to be contested between the Vancouver Canucks and the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League.
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