5 Things We Learned: Chicago Fire 3, Orlando City 1

For the first time since 2009, Chicago Fire fans have a playoff win to celebrate. More than that, Gregg Berhalter’s team put on a complete match that answers many of the questions around the team heading into the postseason.

Here’s five things we learned from the game that sent the Fire onwards in the playoffs.

1) The Fire were ready for the playoffs – and Gregg Berhalter is a big part of why

The biggest question coming into the match was how ready the Fire would be for the postseason. Although the squad does boast a handful of MLS playoff veterans – including two, in Kellyn Acosta and Omar González, who have won MLS Cup, this was the first MLS Cup playoff game for most of the squad. The concerns were intensified after the Fire dropped points in two highly winnable games at the end of their season,, coming out flat in their Decision Day clash last Saturday.

Orlando, meanwhile, despite their poor form in the month and a half of their season, have considerable experience in the playoffs, having made it to the postseason each of the past five years under Head Coach Óscar Pareja and losing out in the Eastern Conference Final last year.

Turns out, the Fire were ready, and they, not the visitors, looked like the playoff veterans. The team came out flying. At half, the score may have been level but the game on the pitch clearly wasn’t. Opta didn’t register a single shot from Orlando in the first half; MLS’s official data provider had the visitors with just one (none on target) – worth 0.02 xG. That compares to the nine shots (one on target, several near-misses) from the Fire.

The credit for the fast start goes to Gregg Berhalter, whose preparations for his squad included help channeling emotions in what was the biggest game of many of the players’ club careers.

“It was important to set a good tone,” the Fire head coach said after the game when asked about the team’s fast start to the match. “We talked before the game, about having nerves, being stressed a little bit, right? And it's natural, you know, as a coach, I have the same thing– you feel a little bit tightness in your chest, your stomach's a little bit, you know, butterflies.”

He continued, “And that's completely normal response. When you're in a situation like this and use that as fuel, because as soon as the whistle blows that all goes away, and you have to use that energy that you have to to compete. And the boys did that today.”

2) The Fire – and Brian Gutiérrez – can win in the midfield

Anyone who has read this column or listened to The Bonfire has heard or read me talking about Brian Gutiérrez. To put it as negatively as possible: His skill level is off the charts but he sometimes disappears in games and we hadn’t yet seen him really take control of a game through play in the midfield.

That pushed him to the bench with the arrival of André Franco, who immediately did those things when putting on a Fire jersey. Fellow homegrown midfielder Sergio Oregel Jr., who was a regular starter for the Fire early in the season only to find himself on the bench at kickoff in September, was similarly sidelined.

After Franco’s injury, Gutiérrez – who has been a regular starter for the Fire since the 2022 season – and Oregel started the Fire’s next game against Toronto, only to be taken off at half. Both were on the bench at kickoff for the Fire’s Decision Day clash against the Revs.

The duo started against Orlando, however, and both put on very, very strong performances. Djé D’Avilla, whose improvement in the year is nothing short of a revelation for the Fire, continued to start, but a careless touch last weekend against the Revs put his team behind by a goal in just the first minute. Against Orlando, however, the Ivorian midfielder barely had a touch out of place throughout the game.

When I’ve said that games are won and lost in the middle of pitch, well, that isn’t just my opinion. After the game, Berhalter said “I’m a firm believer that you win and you lose games with your midfield and our midfield held their own tonight.”

The Fire played out of a 4-3-3 from kickoff for the first time since their loss against NYCFC on September 14th – Franco’s second start – and won a game out of that formation for the first time since September 6th against the Revs at SeatGeek.

Speaking of the victory over Orlando, Berhalter was clear why the shift was made. “We switched formations purposely to be more aggressive, more attacking, to press higher. And we needed them to have big games, Sergio [Oregel] and Guti, and they did, together with D’Avilla. D’Avilla was incredible in the midfield, winning balls.”

D’Avilla and Oregel’s play was also noteworthy, but Guti’s stands out. On top of the goal, he had what was, per American Soccer Analysis’s goals added (G+) metric, his best game in a Fire shirt – and it came in what was arguably the biggest game of his Fire career that now spans six full seasons.

3) Jack Elliott is an autumn

The Fire captain’s strong work throughout the year has gone largely under the radar. That may make sense – the Fire had the league’s second strongest offense in the regular season (after Inter Miami), but they also gave up the 7th most goals with 57. That’s more than any other team that made it to the postseason.

It’s hard to imagine center backs getting too many rave reviews when those are the squad’s numbers. Beyond the stats, however, Elliott has quietly been a rock for the Chicago Fire. Yes, he’s made mistakes that have led to goals – and had an own goal against Toronto three weeks ago  – but many of the mistakes have happened when Elliott was trying to do too much, rather than errors when doing his job. He’s had to paper over the cracks in a rotating back line that, until the arrival of Joel Waterman at the trade deadline, lacked a MLS-proven partner that could stay healthy.

As the season turned to fall, however, Elliott has made it clear to everyone why Gregg Berhalter gave him the captain’s armband early in the 2025 season. In the aforementioned Toronto game? He made up for the own goal by scoring a brace of his own.

And in the Fire’s first playoff game in eight years, he put on another performance that showed just what kind of leader he was. He had the Fire’s single clearest chance to break the deadlock in the first half, sending a header not far off target.

Elliott’s battle through adversity, however, is what really stood out. After a head injury in the Fire’s box left him bleeding on the field, the Fire captain completed the requisite concussion protocol and resumed play, even as it appeared that he continued to bleed. Digging deep and doing what it takes — whatever it takes — shows the kind of grit and determination that the team will need to display if they hope to advance against the Philadelphia Union, Elliott’s former team.

4) The Fire’s twelfth man is back

Years of poor results – the Fire’s previous playoff appearance in 2017 came after the Fire had first back-to-back Wooden Spoon seasons in MLS history in 2015 and 2016 – combined with a front office under previous team ownership that was sometimes actively hostile to supporters to wear down the Fire’s supporter culture in the 2010s. Then COVID hit.

Afterwards, the Fire supporters culture that reemerged, playing, initially, in sparse crowds at Soldier Field felt nothing like the culture that had once been the league’s fiercest and most vibrant. A sometimes sparsely-populated section gathering in a cavernous NFL stadium did the culture no favors, and as ticket prices increased, it appeared that an increasing number of people were buying tickets in the supporters section to sit down and watch the game in the most affordable location in the stadium rather than add to the gameday atmosphere.

Against Orlando, however? That all changed. It was easily the loudest, most boisterous crowd Section 8 has housed since the pandemic, surpassing the carnival-like atmosphere that came when the stands were similarly packed against Inter Miami over the past two seasons.

Not only was the section packed, not only was it loud, but the Section 8 that once made Chicago the hardest environment for visiting teams in MLS once again found its footing. Virtually every action from a player in purple was met with boos from the supporters. Every decision from referee Drew Fischer was either cheered loudly or booed harshly by the crowd. It was, in short, a wonderful place to be if you were wearing red and a terrible place to be if you weren’t.

And it was noticed. Jonathan Dean, after his performance, was effusive in his praise .“I think it's awesome, especially here. The fans are right there. We can, after every goal celebration, after the first one, people were in the crowd with the fans, right? That kind of gives us that extra bit of, you know, the X factor, right? Especially playing at home, at SeatGeek, we've been very good. And so for us, a lot of that's feeling the atmosphere from the fans. And then when we score, and you hear them chanting, ‘We want more!’ So for us, that's encouraging. We want to give the fans something to be proud of. And fortunately tonight, that was the case.”

It’s something that Hugo Cuypers also picked up on, saying “There was a huge atmosphere right from the start of the game, and then when we scored that first one, they really pushed us. Honestly, there were only a few moments where I really felt tired because you had so much energy, so much adrenaline, and they really helped us get that win.”

For Fire homegrown Gutiérrez, however, it meant something even greater. Asked about his celebration with supporters after the goal, he called it “an incredible feeling because I was once in that stand. And I've always wanted to do that growing up. And picturing that as a kid, I mean, finally doing that today was incredible.”

Speaking about Sector Latino fans, Gutiérrez – normally a man of few words to the media – opened up, saying “They're my people, coming from the same background,” adding “honestly, I do it for them. And, yeah, it's honestly a great connection that we have, because we live the same background and we come from the same people.”

Those connections matter because….

5) This is Chicago’s team

Chicago is a city that is hard to categorize and impossible to pigeonhole. The diversity of the city is mirrored in the Fire’s squad, which combines Chicagoans very different backgrounds – geographically, ethnically, socioeconomically – with some of the top soccer talent from around the globe.

Part of that is literal: The Fire have had record-breaking contributions from academy products, players who were born and raised not just in Chicagoland but who learned the game in the culture of the Fire’s academy. Four of those players – Gutiérrez, Oregel, Chris Brady and Andrew Gutman – started against Orlando.The rest of the squad, like many Chicagoans, have come from around the globe, attracted to Chicago’s opportunities.

Part of it goes deeper: Not only does the Fire’s squad mirror the diversity of the city, with multiple languages and races, but it also mirrors the city’s values.

No value epitomizes the City of Broad Shoulders more than putting your nose down and working hard – something on display Wednesday night against Orlando from the entire squad – but the play of Hugo Cuypers deserves recognition.

Playing at striker, a position often thought of as being free of defensive – and many other – responsibilities, Cuypers was everywhere on the pitch for the Fire against Orlando. Although Cuypers hadn’t scored in the Fire’s previous three matches – despite his 17 goals being the most for a Fire player since Nemanja Nikolić in 2017 – he had continued to make his presence felt on the pitch, doing both big things – his 1-2 plays with Philip Zinckernagel have been a key part of the Danish player’s success down the stretch – and small ones. Breaking up passes. Hold up play. Getting back to defend.

Cuypers was doing all of those things against Orlando. The hard work has been noticed by his coach, who said that Cuypers “he works tirelessly. He doesn't stop working.”

He’s not the only one who works hard. Jonathan Dean, long a fan favorite because, as then-Fire Head Coach Frank Klopas put it in 2023 – after a game where Dean also set up Brian Gutiérrez on the opening goal – he’s a “blue collar guy” with an intense work ethic “in training and every day.” Klopas’s words from 2023 were echoed by Berhalter just over two years later, who said that  Dean is “He's one that we don't focus on that much because he just does his job every day; doesn't say much, doesn't complain at all, just works hard.”

A team with deep local roots – a rarity in both MLS and the American pro sports landscape – combined with the best from around the globe, putting down their heads, getting to work and getting rewarded for it?

Sure sounds like Chicago’s team to me.