Photo by Mike DiNovo/USA Today Sports

By FRANCO PANIZO

Chicago Fire head coach Frank Yallop is not entirely thrilled with this stretch in the MLS schedule, but he’s also not spending too much time dwelling on it.

Twenty days will have passed from the time the Fire last took the field to the time they play their next game. Chicago was most recently in action in April 4th’s 3-2 victory over Toronto FC, but will have to wait until April 24 to resume MLS play.

The reason for the lengthy layoff is down to the Fire’s rescheduling of an April 15 road game against the New England Revolution, which was agreed upon to help Chicago better prepare for its April 18 meeting away to the Montreal Impact. But the Impact match was also postponed this past weekend, with MLS making the decision in order to allow the Impact to better prepare for the road leg of their CONCACAF Champions League final series with Club America on April 22.

It has all essentially resulted in back-to-back bye weeks for the Fire, which Yallop sees as unfortunate given that his club was starting to find a rhythm.

“Ideally, you don’t want that,” said Yallop on a conference call on Monday. “You’ve gathered some momentum with two home wins in a row, and looking forward to playing again. We moved the New England game to give us every opportunity to get a result in Montreal, and obviously, that game’s gone now, so our next match is in 11 or so days time.

“Not ideal, but we’ve just got to get on with it and be prepared for that next game once it comes.”

That next game, Chicago’s second and last this month, will come at home against expansion club New York City FC. The Fire are in the process of trying to finalize a friendly for this weekend in order to stay sharp during this long break.

The club played an 11-on-11 intra-squad scrimmage this past weekend that saw everyone play 75 minutes, according to Yallop, but he wants a game against a different opponent so that the Fire players are not “sort of beating each other up.”

“In hindisight, we’d loved to have played the New England game knowing that the other one’s been moved,” said Yallop. “Hindsight is easy, but I wanted a free week leading up to the Montreal game, that’s one of the reasons that we as a club moved the New England game into the free weekend in June, which seemed to make sense for everybody. Then, obviously, the Montreal game changed.

“The league had input, and the league basically changed the game. We just take it as it is. They’ve got a massive game coming up, Montreal do, in their CCL final, and good luck to them in that. It would’ve been nice to have played, but obviously the thought went into it of giving Montreal the opportunity to do well in the first leg on Wednesday.”

As understanding as he was, Yallop is aware that his club will be at a disadvantage going into their next game. The consecutive byes come after the Fire had won its first two games of the year, and leave them with just five matches under their belt going into next week’s clash. By contract, NYCFC will have played seven games by the time the two Eastern Conference teams face off at Toyota Park.

It’s a far from ideal situation, but one that Yallop is planning to tackle head-on.

“I think a lot has to do with stadiums and travel and all those things, and competitions,” said Yallop. “CONCACAF (Champions League) is thrown in the middle of it. Normally, (an MLS team is not) in the final, so it’s a tough one. But it’s a work in progress and we’ve just got to bear with and keep going, and we want the league to prosper, we want our league to look good, and we want to showcase our teams.

“You’ve just got to accept it. It evens up, usually, at the end of the season. If you have a week where you play three games and you win all three then you love it. We’ve just got to keep going and just deal with whatever we’ve got to deal with.”