Arch Rival: Chicago Fire vs St. Louis City Match 12 Preview

The Fire travel to St. Louis for their first-ever MLS match in town, just over a year after the first-ever match between the two clubs on MLS’s official Rivalry Week.

That match, a 2-1 win in the U.S. Open Cup, was the first of Frank Klopas’s current tenure as head coach and was followed up four days later by a 1-0 win in MLS regular season action at Soldier Field.

The Fire would love nothing more than to continue their perfect record against MLS’s newest team, while St. Louis is looking to even the series between the two teams, as both teams search for just their third win of the season.

Series History

All time: 2W-0D-0LLast Match: May 13: Chicago Fire 1-0 St. Louis at Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.

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St. Louis

In MLS play, St. Louis traveled to Houston to face the Dynamo last Saturday and walked out with a 0-0 draw in a match that featured 40 shots (10 on target) between the two clubs but precious few actual chances for either team.  Incredibly, the draw was St. Louis’s seventh of the year, and came two weeks after they faced regional rival Sporting Kansas City to a 3-3 draw.

Alongside their draws, they’ve had victories over Austin (April 14) and New York City (March 2nd) and a single loss, to Real Salt Lake on March 30.

Fire

The Fire lost 1-0 to the New England Revolution, extending the team’s winless streak to four games (2D, 2L), and the team’s goalless drought to 372 minutes, dating back to Brian Gutiérrez’s goal against the Houston Dynamo on April 6.

The Storyline

It’s hard not to reflect back on where the team was a year ago. The team had just dismissed Ezra Hendrickson as Head Coach following what was considered to be a disappointing start that saw the team get just two wins in their first 10 matches alongside five draws, giving the team 11 points, and installed Frank Klopas as interim Head Coach for, as we were told at the time, the remainder of the season.

Klopas’s team delivered victories over St. Louis – twice in the span of a week – buoying fan optimism and giving the fanbase hope that they might finally have a year that saw the team make it to the postseason.

The victories proved to be chimeric for the Fire, and the team would fail to get a win in the next six games, and despite an early summer surge, the team’s performance after the Leagues Cup ensured that the playoff drought would continue.

A year later, the team’s results have been virtually identical: 10 points after 11 games, just slightly behind the pace that cost Hendrickson his job, despite significant investment in the squad.

The Fire, despite their struggles, are just three points behind St. Louis in the league table (the Missouri team does have a game in hand), but St. Louis’s record – only having suffered one defeat on the season – gives their campaign a distinctly different feel than the Fire’s, but it still comes as a disappointment to their fans, who had a fairytale start to the team’s existence last year but are now performing much closer to the playoff bubble team that the underlying numbers suggest that the team has always been.

The game is, maybe, not truly a full-blown rivalry just yet, a sentiment shared by Fire head Coach Frank Klopas – “it’s going to take time to build. It’s set in a great way where I think it can be a great rivalry in the future, but I think the great rivalries, I think those take place when you play year after year, when you play in important games and when you play in finals and when you play in playoffs and stuff like that.”

Still, Fabian Herbers called it a “real rivalry,” noting that “we beat them twice so they’ll be hungry to beat us.”

With the Fire nabbing just one point out of a possible nine during their recent three game homestand, points on the road are essential to get this season ack on track, and getting three of them against a geographic rival would do a lot to assuage fans frustrated by the team’s lack of production recently.

St. Louis Players to Watch.

Roman Bürki: The Swiss goalkeeper – and occasional teammate of Xherdan Shaqiri’s on the Swiss national team in prior years – became one of the team’s first players when he signed with the team just under a year before they started play. The former Borussia Dortmund keeper is St. Louis’s highest paid player and his shotstopping abilities were a key part of St. Louis’s success last year.

João Klauss: Along with Bürki, the Brazilian striker is one of the faces of St. Louis City, pacing the team with 10 goals in just 19 matches played due to injury last year. Klauss is a favorite of St. Louis City’s Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel, who brought the then-19-year-old forward to TSG 1899 Hoffenheim in 2017 when he was director of scouting for that club. Assuming Klauss plays, it will be his first match against the Fire, as he was out with injury for both meetings between the two teams in 2023.

Fire Keys to Victory

• Weather the storm: Turning this one over to Frank Klopas, who, when asked about how to counter against St. Louis’s speedy, direct attack, said “Our mentality has to be to make sure that we are already for the first 10, 15, 20 minutes of the game, because they are going to come out with energy, being at home. I’ve watched games there, great stadium, great atmosphere. They get energized behind their fans… In the beginning, it will be hectic, and we have to be ready for that.” No team can press at a high rate for 90 minutes, and weathering the storm early will mean that the Fire can come out of the game’s opening minutes with fresher legs than their opponents and try to build through possession.

• Trigger warning: No team has passed the ball fewer yards than St. Louis’s 53,445 yards so far this season. No team has carried the ball fewer than St. Louis’s 12,701 yards this season (both stats according to fbref). And yet the team just has one defeat on the year. That’s because St. Louis are incredibly aggressive with their pressing triggers, trying to get their opponents to cough the ball up when playing out of their back line, which then gives St. Louis possession in or near a dangerous scoring position without having to work the ball up the field. The Fire need to be aware of this, something that Klopas noted in discussing St. Louis’s game plan, and prepare for it. That means, at a starting point, accurate passes out of the back so that the receiving player doesn’t need to settle the ball or work it to their good foot, and situational awareness so that the receiving player knows what passing options they have as well as how near they are to a soon-to-be-pressing St. Louis player so they can make sure they get the next pass out in time.

• Don’t get cross: On the other end of the field, the Fire need a better plan on offense than simply relying on crosses into the box, for two reasons: First, they’re not that effective: By the team’s count, they has 22 crosses last week and [checks notes] zero goals. That’s actually a bit less than average – globally, about 5-6% of crosses are converted into goals – but it’s still a low-percentage play, and one that likely results in loose ball or turnover if it doesn’t work out. Two – assuming that that’s what happens, then it plays into St. Louis’s game plan pretty well: They’ll gladly boot the ball down the pitch, even if it means sending it to a Fire defender that didn’t join in on the attack, and after a cross, a lot of players will be out of position to receive passes or defend. No need to work into St. Louis’s game plan here.

Panel Predictions

Alex Calabrese

Now is not the time.

Prediction: St. Louis 2-0 Fire

Christian Hirschboeck

We may be down, but it’s Saint Louis.

Prediction: St. Louis 0-1 Fire

Jiggly Carollo

"It's always been about love and hate, now let me say I'm the biggest hater. I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress." If there is one game out of every season that we need to win now, it's against St Louis. Personally, I'm not that much of a St Louis hater, but there's a lot more people around here who hate with a burning passion. So for them, I hope this works out. Because I have another potential score in my head that is less pretty, but for now, let's say the Fire pull out something stupid.

Prediction: St. Louis 1-2 Fire

Tim Hotze

Both teams need wins; neither team has been getting them. Somehow, a result that gives both teams something but leaves both grumbling feels fitting.

Prediction: St. Louis 1-1 Fire

Matt Shabelman

It’s time something good happened to this community.

Prediction: St. Louis 0-2 Fire

Match Information and How to Watch

Date and Time: Saturday, May 11, 2024, 7:30 PM CTLocation: CITYPARK, St. Louis, Mo.Forecast: 68’F expected at kickoff, winds at 5 mph, 6% cloud cover and a 0% chance of precipitationTV: Apple TV – MLS Season Pass