FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Heading into the final 25 minutes of Sunday's game at New England, the Chicago Fire looked comfortably tied at 1-1 with the Revolution and threatened to push forward to grab a winner.
Twenty-five minutes later, the Fire were back in the locker room trying to figure out how they slipped to their first defeat on the campaign as the Revs scored twice in the final quarter of the match to earn a 3-1 victory.
"I'm not necessarily sure," said Fire striker Chris Rolfe, scorer of the Fire's only goal on the stroke of halftime, on how the team slipped to defeat. "It felt like we were doing just fine. There were two plays that we just slipped."
Fire head coach Dave Sarachan was more pointed in his thoughts about why the Fire failed to finish off the contest.
"I think we beat ourselves tonight," Sarachan said. "It's frustrating to give up one on the corner and then get one back. We didn't do well enough with [the second goal] and Ralston popped up at the far post."
Not doing well enough with the defensive play was symptomatic of the three tallies the Fire allowed on the evening. Each of the Revolution's three goals came from inside the goal area.
That was a statistic that troubled the Fire head coach.
"It's very frustrating," Sarachan said. "There's no secret to how New England plays. It's not like we were surprised. We have to go back to the tape and see where our positioning was."
It looked good for the Fire as Rolfe struck from 22 yards as the game entered first-half stoppage time to cancel out an early Jeff Larentowicz goal. After the Revolution failed to properly clear a short corner kick, the ball found the foot of Rolfe.
"We switched it around and I was up top on the corners," Rolfe said. "I tried to anticipate the clear and got in a good first touch. I tried to keep it low because it looked like Reis couldn't see. I just tried to find that space. I didn't hit it as well as I'd like but he couldn't see it."
Rolfe's goal gave the Fire the momentum heading into the second stanza and the Fire consolidated the momentum into an advantage over the opening 20 minutes of the second half.
Yet just when the Fire had settled, the Revolution made a double substitution and found a goal against the run of play in the 68th minute as Khano Smith's cross traveled through the goal area unmolested to Steve Ralston. The veteran slipped in front of a defender and gleefully smashed home from four yards to give the home side a lead it would not relinquish.
Despite the goal, Rolfe said his teammates were searching for the precious equalizer before Wells Thompson's first MLS goal put the game beyond doubt in the 81st minute.
"We went into the half 1-1 and we felt good," Rolfe said. "We were still confident after the Revolution's second goal. We were trying to get that goal."
The Fire's first loss of the season left Sarachan pining for a chance to reclaim the lost points on a day where Chicago felt there might have been an opportunity to earn a point or three at Gillette Stadium.
"We weren't going to go undefeated," Sarachan said. "[But] this is one of those days where you felt where we could have come away with some points."
While they didn't get any points, one positive for the Fire was the return of Justin Mapp. The midfielder missed last weekend's 1-0 victory against Houston with a left hamstring strain but entered against New England as a substitute. Mapp played 15 minutes with the first team before starting the reserve contest played after the game.
"Justin's a quality player and we wanted to get him onto the field," Sarachan said.
Kyle McCarthy is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
