OFFENSE STILL A PROBLEM FOR STORM

By: Dan Parks

A short-handed Chicago Storm squad just couldn’t keep up with the St. Louis Steamers Sunday night as the visitors from the “Gateway City” came away form UIC Pavilion with a 7-4 victory. Joe Reiniger notched a hat trick for St. Louis as the Steamers handed the Storm its third straight defeat.

Frank Klopas’ team was without midfielder John Ball, who was finishing up his two-game suspension that stemmed from an incident with a fan in Baltimore on Dec. 3, and defender Matt Johnson due to a broken ankle suffered in Philadelphia during the Storm’s loss to the Kixx on Dec. 10. He could miss as many as five games recovering from the injury.

The Storm’s offense continues to struggle. The “Yellow and Black” have scored more than four goals in a game only once, and that was against the expansion California Cougars on Nov. 19, in the team’s first victory of the season. The Storm has scored only 13 goals in that four-game span.

“It just seems we can’t score a goal,” Klopas said. “We create chances, but we just can’t seem to put the ball in the net. We gave up so many bad goals. We played a couple minutes pretty good and moved the ball quick and scored a couple nice goals. St. Louis came in and did the little things. It seemed to me that was the team that wanted to win more tonight, and that was the disappointing part to me.”

Reiniger’s first of three goals in the game came at the 2:22 mark of the second quarter right off a restart to give the Steamers a 2-0 lead. Randy Soderman opened the scoring less than three minutes into the contest.

The Storm (2-5) woke up after that point using some great passing combinations to tie the game up before halftime. Mexican compatriots Byron Alvarez and Jorge Valle worked a great give-and-go that resulted in drawing St. Louis goalie Brett Phillips out of the goal and Alvarez tapping the ball into the net for his third goal of the season with under six minutes left in the half.

Just 2:24 before the break, Alvarez ran a three-on-one counter attack to perfection. After dribbling a bit, he passed to former UIC stand out Eric Lukin, who was making his Storm debut, running along the boards to Alvarez’s right. Lukin then hit a low pass to the far post that Valle slid onto the end of to tie the score.

“I thought he did well,” Klopas said of Lukin. “He was aggressive. He made good passes with the ball and got involved. He wanted to play, and he was good. I thought it was positive with him.”

“Novi” Marojevic gave the storm its only lead of the contest less than five minutes into the third quarter as he converted a penalty kick called after D.J. Newsom handled the ball in the penalty area.

The officials evened things out soon after that calling a penalty on Storm goalkeeper Danny Waltman 44 seconds later for elbowing Marcos Chantel while going for a ball in the air at the top of the penalty area. Storm midfielder Fabinho donned the goalie jersey and gloves but used his feet to thwart Reiniger’s penalty kick attempt, but he couldn’t keep the Steamers out of his net during the ensuing power play. Former Storm midfielder Sandre Naumoski tapped in the tying goal at 6:20 in the third quarter.

St. Louis (5-2) took the lead for good when Reiniger smacked a free kick from about the yellow line past Waltman with 7:24 left in the third. Naumoski scored his second of the game at 3:39 of the fourth quarter when his acute angled shot from the corner deflected off Waltman’s hands and into the net.

Fabinho played goalie a little more after Waltman served a penalty for handling the ball outside of the penalty area. St. Louis’ Chile Farias missed wide with his shootout attempt, but Fabinho kept the net empty on this St. Louis power play.

Klopas pulled Waltman in favor of having Novi play as a sixth attacker with about four minutes remaining but St. Louis sandwiched empty net goals around Mark Ughy’s desperation marker to put the game away.

“If you see the guys in practice and you see them in games; it’s two different sides,” said Klopas. “You’ve got to be able to come and perform when it’s the game, not in practice. Practice players, we don’t need those. We have to do something, and we have a little break, so this is the time to adjust something. There are different ways of doing that. Working on some things in practice or bringing in other players. I’m not happy. I don’t like losing. I’m a competitive person. I like good soccer to be played, and we’re not doing that.”

The Storm will have plenty of time to work out the kinks on the offense. They’ll look to try to end this losing skid when they travel to St. Louis to face the Steamers on Thursday, December 29, before returning home to host the still winless expansion California Cougars on New Year’s Day at 4 p.m.

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