CHICAGO \u2014 Philip Zinckernagel scored early in the second half, Maren Haile-Selassie had a late goal and an assist, and the Chicago Fire beat the Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 on Tuesday night in a matchup of former Bayern Munich teammates Robert Lewandowski and Thomas M\u00fcller.<\/p>\n
Lewandowski and M\u00fcller spent eight seasons together at Bayern from 2014-22. The stars were supposed to reunite in Major League Soccer months ago before wildfires postponed the highly anticipated matchup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lewandowski’s unselfish pass to a wide-open Haile-Selassie at the back post capped the scoring in the 88th minute. Lewandowski, who returned to Chicago early from international duty with Poland after a yellow-card suspension ruled him out of Monday\u2019s match, has six goals and three assists through his first 12 MLS appearances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chicago (13-8-6) moved past Charlotte into fourth place in the Eastern Conference standings. The top four finishers earn home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vancouver (15-7-5) remains atop the Western Conference with 50 points, three ahead of St. Louis and Dallas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jonathan Bamba opened the scoring in the ninth minute for his first goal since March 21. The Fire’s designated player dribbled to the top of the 18-yard box and bent a shot past goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka.<\/p>\n
Zinckernagel finished a nice give-and-go with Haile-Selassie to make it 2-0 in the 50th. Zinckernagel’s first goal since May came after he missed a penalty kick in the first half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vancouver defender Mathias Laborda scored in the 73rd by heading in Oliver Larraz\u2019s corner kick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whitecaps: Visit LAFC on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fire: Host New York City FC on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Philip Zinckernagel scored early in the second half, Maren Haile-Selassie had a late goal and an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-923550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}