Chicago lived up to its nickname of the windy city, but Mother Nature wasn’t the only one creating wind as the the MetroStars blew away the Chicago Fire in a 3-0 rout.

Several weeks ago I scheduled a trip to visit a friend who lives in Chicago and check out a MetroStars road game. It came as no surprise to me that the weather prediction was for a cold, rainy and windy day. That seems to be the default forecast whenever I’m headed to see the Metros, but much like last week in New Jersey, the sun ignored the weather people and provided for a nice day.

When we arrived to tailgate, I was happy to see people near by wearing MetroStars jerseys. We went over to say hello and discovered it was Tim Regan’s family who live in the Chicago area. We spent most of the tailgate drinking with them and talking soccer. They told us all sorts of great Metro secrets and stories we promised not to share with anyone, so sadly you’ll all have to use your imagination.

During tailgating, the Regans played an excellent game they called “beanbags” which involved two goals and throwing beanbags. I took notes and will be discussing the game with the other Idiots as a suggested activity for tailgating at Giants Stadium, because it’s a lot of fun.

We created an excellent poster to display during the game which was a play on the title for last week’s recap and showed the Chicago audience that a First Row Idiot was present.

Our seats weren’t in the first row, but Chicago’s attendance isn’t much different than the Metros and it wasn’t all that difficult for us to move up a few rows to the front row. My poster immediately helped me make many new friends, including the Fire’s mascot Sparky.

Needless to say, Sparky didn’t appreciate my poster and came by many times to express his displeasure. At one point during the game, when the MetroStars were winning two to zero, my taunting of Sparky drew him from his position on the field into the stands. Sparky confronted me, throw my poster on to the field and tried to tear off my MetroStars jersey. I laughed as I reminded Sparky of the score.

The MetroStars showed they are a completely different team when they play on the road and completely embarrassed the Chicago Fire in front of a crowd of 8,341.

Youri Djorkaeff was back in the line up and his presence was immediately noticeable as he played an good game and certainly helped the team play better as well. Once he gets into better shape and if he can stay healthy and become even more comfortable playing with the team, he will really help the team excel.

Amado registered his fourth goal of the season in the 23rd minute putting the Metros up one to nothing. A Youri assist helped Gaven score his first goal of the evening in the 45th minute. Gaven wasn’t done though and scored another on a Amado and Magee assist in the 62nd minute.

The Fire had a few opportunities, but Wells showed he’s starting to get the hang of the whole goalkeeper thing and made some solid saves.

At some point during the game, Nick came on to the field to watch. At that point, the game was three to zero. He saw my poster and shouted over to me: “We need to play every game on the road.” After he got done talking to Peter Wilt of the Chicago Fire, he came over to talk. He was very nice and thanked me for traveling from Jersey to support the team. He talked about how poor the field was at Giants Stadium and how difficult it is for the Metros to create opportunities on the field there because of that. Like usual, I asked him about the new stadium and he said they were making progress. He then joke that he didn’t want to work too fast because once the deal gets signed he’ll have nothing else to do. I, of course, gave him a blank stare showing him I didn’t appreciate the joke, but anyways, Nick saying hello was appreciated and was nice. (A funny moment of Nick’s appearance was when the entire Chicago Supporters section chanted Ante Razov in Nick’s direction in response to the trade rumors about a possible trade for former Fire player Razov.)

At the conclusion of the game, the players walked around the entire edge of the stadium and found each section that had some Metro Fans and thanked them. On their way back inside, they came by and I got an opportunity to shake hands with a few Metros including Michael Bradley, Tim Ward, Eddie Gaven, Tim Regan, Zack Wells, and Youri Djorkaeff, as well as general thank you from Bob Bradley, Amado and Woly.