The Fire travel to face Supporters Shield-leading FC Cincinnati on Wednesday. Normally, facing the team with the best record in their own building is a recipe for disaster, but FC Cincinnati have seemed utterly human at home, notching a 6W-2D-4L record at TQL Stadium this season.

Winning will still be a tall order for the Fire, who have just one road win on the year, but if they want to change their fortunes this season, they’ll need to start getting wins on the road and wins against opposition higher in the table than they are. This is a prime opportunity for the Fire to kill two birds with one stone.

Note: As the Fire faced Cincinnati earlier this season, this is an abbreviated article focused on updates. Check out that preview for an overview of FC Cincinnati.

FC Cincinnati

Overview

Since Chris Albright took control of FC Cincinnati’s front office and Head Coach Pat Noonan was hired, the team has been transformed from the worst in the league to one of the best.

They won the Supporters Shield last year and are in the driver’s seat to win it again because the team has been tactically flexible, with talented attacking pieces and a dominant defense.

In 2024, the team has been hovering at almost the exact league average of attack speed and passes per sequence. They favor direct attacks, but can also build out of the back. They’ve got some of the best attacking wing backs in the league and one of the best No. 10s in Lucho Acosta, who leads the league in assists (ahead of one Lionel Messi) and key passes (a pass to a player that results in a shot on goal), while also having eleven goals to his credit.

FC Cincinnati are close-game specialists, with 11 of their victories this season, and 14 of their wins last season coming by a single goal, compared with three one-goal losses this year and just two all of last season.

Still, the team isn’t infallible, and the resilience of the squad will be tested against the Fire given absences, particularly on the back line.

Who’s Back There?

To an even greater extent than the Fire, have been racked by injuries, and like the Fire, they’ve been largely concentrated in the back line. Center backs Nick Hagglund and Matt Miazga both suffered season-ending injuries. Another CB, Miles Robinson, has missed significant time with national team duty. He was slated to be available for this match before joining the U.S. Men’s Olympic team but earned a one-match suspension courtesy of a red card.

Although FC Cincinnati’s shape varies based on game state, they’ve almost universally played with three center backs over the past few seasons, and as of right now they have… two center backs available for the game against the Fire, in Ian Murphy and Alvas Powell. Both are serviceable, but aren’t nearly the kind of talents in those positions that Miazga or Robinson are.

Adding insult to injury, Lucho Acosta did not practice with the team on Tuesday and is listed as questionable. That generally means that a player won’t be available for a match the next day – and if they are, they may be short of 100%.

Who Will Be in the Starting XI for FC Cincinnati?

Particularly if Acosta isn’t available for Cincinnati, Pat Noonan is going to be hard pressed to make the lineup work. It’s a bit like using a finger to plug a hole in a dam just to see water pour out from where you just moved your finger.

The team has two natural center backs available in Ian Murphy and Alvas Powell and plays with three players in that position, so someone will have to be deputized. DeAndre Yedlin is a likely candidate, much as Arnaud Souquet has played center back for the Fire.

That means one of the two other right wingbacks on the depth chart will have to start. One is Yuya Kubo. The other is Alvas Powell, who is already starting at center back.

Now, if Yuya Kubo is able to start at right wingback with Yedlin as a center back, things might just work out fine. The issue is, if Lucho Acosta is injured, Yuya Kubo is the obvious second-choice player in the No. 10 attacking midfield role that is critical to the way Cincinnati plays.

On the left, Luca Orellano is one of the best left wingbacks in the league. The team has more depth on the left than right, but pulling either Oreallano or Yamil Asad, the number two player at that spot, as a center back really pulls an offensive contributor out for the team. Behind them, experience and offensive ability drops precipitously. Noonan might feel comfortable playing Bret Halsey as a center back on the left side instead of as a wingback, but he’s racked up just under 600 minutes with the team across two seasons, and I suspect if Noonan felt comfortable giving him minutes, we’d have seen that by now. Maybe we see it, but if so, it’s an act of desperation.

In the defensive midfield, expect Pavel Bucha and Obinna Nwobodo to start. At forward, with Aaron Boupendza having fallen out of favor (and likely making his way for the exits as soon as it can be arranged), Kevin Kelsy and Corey Baird are likely to get the nods, and in net, Naperville native Roman Celentano should start.

Chicago Fire

Close Doesn’t Always Count in Horseshoes

It’s once again been two games without a goal for the Fire, and this time, they didn’t register a shot on frame until second-half stoppage time.

The team’s offense has become predictable to opposition defenses, and they struggled to cause real headaches for the San Jose Earthquakes – who remain last place in the standings – a week and a half ago, just as they struggled to really challenge New York City FC’s back line on Saturday.

They need to be more fluid in the attack, the distribution needs to be better, and Hugo Cuypers, in particular, needs to be allowed to focus on scoring goals, rather than doing everything from hold up play to distribution as he did against NYCFC.

Joe Lowery at Backheeled has used the term “horseshoe of sadness” to describe games where teams may have the ball around in their own half of the pitch, through the central midfield and in wide areas nearing the opposition penalty are, but who can’t seem to get the ball into it, creating a “horseshoe” shape on a touchmap. That’s more or less exactly how the Fire looked in the last game.

Back Four More

The Fire switched formations, but not really personnel, in the last match, playing out of a four man back line for the first time since May 18 against Columbus and 4-4-2 for the first time since the 1-0 loss against the New England Revolution on May 4th.

Along with the 0-0 draw against Atlanta a week earlier, it’s the third time the Fire have used that formation, and the third time the Fire have failed to score when playing out of that formation.

Nominally, Brian Gutiérrez played the second striker and Maren Haile-Selassie played in the midfield, but in reality, they were both getting the ball in almost identical places. That’s not necessarily a problem if the plan was to allow both of them to rotate through either position, but the fact is, the spacing felt off all match and that really hurt the Fire’s ability to get anything on offense.

Brian Gutiérrez had 56 touches, but most were short passes wide or to a player centrally, playing through pressure, and it never really felt like he was being either a dangerous creator or even a great connector. He also didn’t look goal-dangerous, something you’d ideally want from your forwards, but then again, neither did anyone else.

I’m not saying the 4-4-2 can’t work – though I do have doubts about it being the best formation from this group – just that it hasn’t been working. The Fire were too crowded in the midfield and yet couldn’t seem to advance the ball. Hugo Cuypers was coming back and doing hold up play and distribution far too often.

I suspect one driving force behind the 4-4-2 was to try to mirror NYCFC’s back four, in which case, it won’t be an issue on Wednesday, but either way, I’m hoping it isn’t what we see from Frank Klopas’s side against Cincinnati.

Missing You

FC Cincinnati’s injury issues on their back line have been well-documented. The Fire have been similarly afflicted, but it’s gone somewhat under the radar (possibly because the Fire’s results have been what they have been, both this season and previously).

As it stands, though, the Fire have had natural left backs available to start just 10 of the team’s 23 matches so far this season (eight for Andrew Gutman, and two for Chase Gasper). Tobias Salquist, who the team would be a game-in-game out starter once he was ready to play, has made just six appearances, earning 449 minutes two-thirds of the way through the season.

Carlos Terán, whose play was critical to the team’s success when they switched to a three (or five) back line is injured. Wyatt Omsberg left the game on Saturday in apparent discomfort, though it didn’t appear to be a serious injury and I’d expect him to be ready to go against Cincinnati. Still, even with Omsberg available, that’s a lot of bodies that are out.

On top of that, Allan Arigoni played half a season in Switzerland before arriving with the Fire and has said publicly that he believes he’ll need some kind of a break to stay match fit throughout the season, so expecting him.

It’s been a lot for the Fire, and even though “next man up” is a catchphrase, realistically, MLS rosters are thin and it’s hard to deny that the team would be in a better place right now if they hadn’t had so many injuries concentrated in one place.

Claiming that the Fire are a left back and a center back from greatness would be wild, but it’d be equally unfair to say that the losses to the back line haven’t had an effect on the team’s fortunes.

Who Will Be in the Starting XI vs. FC Cincinnati?

Against FC Cincinnati’s likely 3-5-2 or 5-3-2, I suspect we’ll see a return to three center backs. Hopefully, Salquist made the bench last game but Frank Klopas has been cautious in returning players to duty, so I doubt he starts next Rafael Czichos.

Until Andrew Gutman is ready to return, I think it’s worth running the experiment of having Chris Mueller play as the right wingback. He doesn’t give as much defensively as some other options, but three center backs helps mitigate that, and he provides verticality and an offensive threat that the team needs. That leaves Allan Arigoni starting in the mirror position on the left.

I’d expect to see Brian Gutiérrez return to the midfield next to Kellyn Acosta and, likely, Fabian Herbers, with Hugo Cuypers and Maren Haile-Selassie up top.

Normally, an away match for the Fire – 26th place in the 29 team league – visiting the team at the top of the table would seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb, but the Fire come close to getting a result against FC Cincinnati in recent matchups, and managed a 3-3 run-and-gun kind of draw against the team early last season.

With FC Cincinnati’s issues fielding a complete back line and Lucho Acosta either unavailable or short of 100% for the match, the Fire have a real chance. They need to have more fluidity and coherence in the attack than we’ve seen from them in the past few games, but if they do that and can start knocking FC Cincinnati’s door, they might just find that their cobbled-together back line has left it unlocked.