Advertisers and media buyers, along with 24 players from two lacklustre teams, may be questioning exactly what happened on Thursday evening as two professional teams within the sport of soccer agreed to wait until the Nov. 6 to give their full effort.

The once resurgent Chicago Fire visited the personnel depleted New England Revolution and traded hard yet not ruthless fouls for approximately 93 minutes to earn a 0-0 result.

Neither team really threatened each others goals for most of the match as safe and tactical (ie gutless) play plagued both teams.

The Revolution, missing key players like Taylor Twellman, Steve Ralston and supportiing players like Khano Smith and Adam Cristman controlled most of the match but rarely troubled Fire keeper Jon Busch. They pushed most of their play down the right side of the field but the Fire defense did well to allow any clear scoring opportunities.

The visitors chose to avoid ground play in favor of hoofing it to Brian McBride surrounded by four defenders. The bar in which the reporter was drinking in due to budget and work concerns, but not the economy, was disappointed and showed their displeasure by using curse words directed at a 1 of 6 plasma screen televisions.

Chris Rolfe, player of the week in the final week of the season, found himself stranded on the right touchline while John Thorrington returned from injury to come up with one key tackle to deny a shot on goal but do nothing else.

During the 3rd beer, Brian McBride was thought to have put the Fire ahead but was correctly called offside. Other than that second half opportunity, the Fire did little to show they had any intentions of taking the lead back to Bridgeview.

Substitutions do exist in soccer, however Revolution coach Steve Nicol, had a limited bench to work with while Denis Hamlett allowed Mike Banner a chance to play safe soccer. Patrick Nyarko, Stephen King, and Marco Pappa were all left on the bench.

The first round will be decided in Bridgeview next Thursday at Toyota Park.