The Fire are heading to Ft. Lauderdale to take on an Inter Miami team that has been finding ways to win without Lionel Messi. It’s the second match in a row where the Fire take on the team with the best record in the league.

The team’s final match before heading into the Leagues Cup break will doubtless be difficult, but there’s a tantalizing reward for success: A Fire win combined with draws or victories for Columbus (versus Atlanta) and Philadelphia (against Nashville) would see the team into a postseason spot by the time the clock strikes midnight Saturday night.

Inter Miami

Overview

Just over a year ago, Lionel Messi officially became an Inter Miami player, eclipsing David Beckham as the most-recognizable name in the history of the league. The team had dug itself into a hole with poor results early in the season, and ultimately missed the playoffs despite a charmed Leagues Cup run that ended with the team’s first title.

The team remade its roster over the course of 2023, bringing in several of Messi’s former Barcelona teammates in Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets. In 2024, they continued to reinforce, bringing in midfielder Julian Gressel and former Barça star Luis Suárez amongst others.

Combined with young talent, some of it coming from Inter Miami’s academy, and Chris Henderson, Inter Miami’s Chief Soccer Officer, has built one of the deepest rosters in MLS. Messi and Suárez have had lengthy absences for Copa América and yet the team has still been getting results – enough that they are now top of the league on both a points and points-per-game basis.

The roster has been strengthened by Messi’s presence – there is no way other teams in the league would have been able to sign Jorid Alba or Luis Suárez on TAM deals that see them earning under $1.7 million per year – but ultimately, it is an MLS roster, with significantly stronger (and more experienced) players at some positions than others and one which is being severely tested now by injuries and absences.

Inter Miami’s Style Plays to Team’s Strengths

Head Coach Tata Martino came in midway through the 2023 season and now plays a style reminiscent of his Atlanta United teams: Possession-heavy attacking soccer that is designed to let the team’s high-end scoring talent thrive. Miami have had the ball 54.8 percent of the time, fourth highest in the league, and they lead the league in goals and non-penalty goals.

Statistically, the team is overperforming it’s core numbers, having scored 54 times versus an expected number of just 37.2, per Opta, which would put them in the middle third of the league, but there’s a reason for that: When you’ve got guys like Messi and Suárez, you can continue to outperform your core numbers because your attack has better skill than the models predict.

Robert Taylor, Suárez and Messi form one of the most potent attacking trios in league history, but the template works well enough that the team has thrived with absences to two of the three.

One reason: Martino reunited with midfielder Julian Gressel. Gressel’s 12 assists (9 primary) are second on the team, just one behind Messi’s tally. He’s also been a fantastic pass-before-the-pass guy, helping to move the ball to attacking pieces, and just as you’d expect from the MLS Cup winner, his distribution has been excellent. The team has been relying more on offense from set pieces with some of the stars out over the past few weeks, and Gressel has been a huge part of why that’s been successful.

Skill Throughout the Roster, But Weaknesses Remain

Ultimately, however, it’s still an MLS roster, and you can’t spend everywhere. Notably, the team’s allowed 36 goals this year, which puts them firmly middle of the pack in the league (that’s fine if you’re scoring 54 goals to counterbalance things).

Even when Miami has their Best XI available – and they do not for this match – the back line is a position of relative weakness. On the left, you’ve got Jordi Alba, who is one of the top in the league at generating offense and progressive passes, but gives precious little defensively. Mirroring him on the right, Matías Rojas is also a literal mirror; Strong defensively but average, at best, at passing the ball.

At center back, Tomás Alvilés is good at intercepting tackles, Serhiy Kryvstov is good at blocks and absolutely no one on the back line has shown any interest in trying to win aerials. The entire back line is decent but not really above average at clearing the ball out of dangerous areas.

That worked out fine when goalkeeper Drake Callender was looking elite (and having Busquets in the defensive midfield able to join in and help out certainly papers over a lot of problems), but the goalkeeper has been looking significantly more human in recent weeks. Before Messi’s arrival, Callender was widely considered a temperature-of-the-room goalkeeper in the league: Servicabble but not one that was going to stand out, and it looks like he’s really returning to that form.

Who Will Be in the Starting XI for Inter Miami?

Martino has been lining up his team in a 4-3-3; in practice it doesn’t work that differently than the 4-2-3-1 that his Atlanta teams played, but has the (possibly real) benefit of listing Messi as being an attacker on the games that he plays. He’s not playing against the Fire, however, but he’s not alone.

On top of Messi’s absence, Diego Gómez and Benjamin Cremaschi are away on Olympic duty; Federico Redondo is listed as available but he’s also an alternate for Argentina’s squad. As such, he’s allowed to travel and stay with the team, though he can also fly in if needed.

MLS teams, just given the size of the roster, don’t handle more than a couple absences well. As it stands, the team doesn’t really have backups on either wing: On the left, Robert Taylor is the starter, but if something happens, Gómez is the only real backup option, and he’s on international duty.

On the right, Gressel is the normal backup if Messi isn’t playing, but I suspect he’ll be put into the midfield for this one considering the number of absences they’ve got. That leaves Matías Rojas as the guy, though obviously Gressel can be pulled up from the midfield if needed.

The problem is, Rojas is the normal backup option at that position in the midfield. The other option is David Ruiz, but he’s been making short cameos at the end of matches and hasn’t been a regular starter for months.  On the left side of the midfield, if Redondo is in town, he’ll likely start but I suspect he might actually be traveling to the Olympics. The players behind him in the depth chart? Fellow Olympians Benjamin Cremaschi and Gómez, both of whom are confirmed out for this one. Santiago Morales plays the position in MLS Next Pro but I suspect that Martino will instead opt to put in Franco Negri, the second-choice guy at the left wing back position into the starting lineup.

Busquets centers the central defensive midfield, but if he has to be replaced in the match, the option would seemingly be Yannick Bright, an Italian native that Miami selected in the SuperDraft last year.

The team does have most of its preferred starters backup options on the back line (excepting Facundo Farías who was placed on the season ending injury list months ago).

Chicago Fire

Earning the Clean Sheet

We haven’t talked nearly enough about Chris Brady, and it’s time to rectify that. The Fire goalkeeper has two clean sheets in a row and, boy, did he earn the last one, as FC Cincinnati peppered him with 19 shots, seven of which landed on target. His performance was recognized by a Team of the Matchday nod.

His 77 saves on the season put him seventh in the league, and many of the shots Brady has had to face down have been difficult ones. By point of comparison, Roman Bürki is going to the All Star game, and he’s made 60 saves on the year after facing down 97 shots compared to the 116 that Brady has seen. That gives Bürki a save percentage of 64.9 compared to 72.4 for Brady. The St. Louis goalkeeper had a charmed season in 2023, but this year? Brady’s numbers have been better.

He also hasn’t been getting many favors from his teammates: He’s faced down 7 PKs, most in the league (though to be fair, one was his fault). Still: With the exception of the former U.S. Men’s National Team goalkeeper Brad Guzan, every goalkeeper in the league who has saved a higher percentage of the shots than Brady has at least two more wins than Brady’s six.

The team’s scored one goal in the past three games and has one win and one draw out of those performances. Really can’t ask for much more than that.

Good All Around

After the game on Wednesday, Klopas was full of praise for a lot of members in his squad, and a lot of it was well-deserved. Hugo Cuypers – whose scouting report seemed to paint the Belgian striker as something of a goal merchant – has been doing yeoman’s work throughout the pitch, and Cuypers? Well, I can’t say it better than his coach. Here’s Klopas on his performance: “He uses his body extremely well. He got fouled a lot, which they never called, but that is fine. Hugo is not going to complain. But I think the assist that he made, I think very few players could make an assist like that. To pick up his head and really square that ball. For me, of course, it's different, any striker wants to score goals. But even when he doesn't, you can see how he's able to help the team without the ball. The assist that he got tonight, really positive.”

Gastón Giménez also had one of his best performances in recent memory. Here’s what Klopas had to say about him: “He's definitely one of the guys that have stepped up his game. It's not that he's playing above his means. I know he can play. He can always play. But you also need games and rhythm, and he's getting it and he's performing extremely well. He's hard to take out.”

Arnaud Souquet was also singled out. One last time, to Klopas:: “He's playing great. I'm really proud of just the way he's handled himself. He's an experienced player, very good on the ball, excellent decision-making, (and) knows when to get forward. He brings such a different element, also, when he can also join. We can overload that side with him and Maren (Haile-Selassie) at times, so hats off to him.”

Still, it was a 1-0 win against a team with a back line devastated by injury and suspensions, and missing the league-leading goalscorer. As well as a lot of the squad played, there has to be another gear if the team is going to get a result against Miami.

Why didn’t Brian Gutiérrez Start?

For the second time this year, a seemingly healthy Brian Gutiérrez was held out of the Starting XI. Before, Frank Klopas noted his youth and the need to manage his minutes. When I asked him about Gutiérrez’s exclusion following the win over FC Cincinnati, he was more direct, saying “we couldn’t continue to be playing him all the time because I think mentally and physically both, that I could see that he wasn’t as sharp. He was trying.” Klopas was complimentary to Gutiérrez’s performance, but many had hoped that this would be Gutiérrez’s break out year, where he would move from the “promising young player” category to the kind of name that people around the league

So far, it hasn’t been. When Xherdan Shaqiri was allowed to leave early for the Swiss National Team camp, the team shifted to playing with three center backs, in a 5-3-2 (or 3-5-2). The team’s since shifted things around some (more on this in a minute), but has largely played out of variations of that formation.

One of the storylines was that following Shaqiri’s departure and the shift in formations, Brian Gutiérrez would have the keys to the car at the No. 10 central attacking attacking role. Instead, the formation shift has allowed the team to play without really having a real focal point in the midfield.

It’s now been 10 games since Shaqiri left and although he hasn’t returned yet (despite Shaqiri playing just 71 competitive minutes since May 18th, and and only 11 in the past month, the last of which came July 6th), he should be back soon.

Ten games is enough of a sample size for us to look at what Gutiérrez has been bringing, and in that span, he has just 1.2 expected goals (xG) and 2.2 expected assists (xA), close to the two of each he’s recorded. That averages out to just 4.08 xG and 7.48 xA over the course of a 34 game season.

Those are both below-average numbers for attacking midfielders in this league, Gutiérrez still gives you precious little on defense. Combine that with the fact that Frank Klopas has talked about his sharpness on more than one occasion at this point and it’s concerning.

Yes, he has five goals on the year, more than every other year of his professional career combined, and yes, the team hasn’t exactly been great around him, but the fact is, Shaqiri’s early departure was the team opening a door and he didn’t exactly go running inside.

He’s still young having just turned 21, but he’s also a fifth year pro, has regularly made the matchday lineup for four years and been a starter for three of them. He’s got the talent, he just needs to step it up.

Too Matchy Matchy? How Will the Fire Line Up against Inter Miami?

One thing Klopas mentioned is that FC Cincinnati “played in 5-2-3 and we wanted to match.” That’s been something of a trend for the Fire: They switched to a four man back line against New York City FC, something, notably, they didn’t do against the Union who also play four in the back.

Trying to counter an opposing team’s tactics is one thing, but it also makes it hard for players to grow and thrive in certain roles. Part of this is out of necessity, as an already-short MLS roster has been shortened by injury, and part of it doesn’t really matter: A formation exists on a graphic and the game is played on a pitch. Positions on the are fluid, and even within the same formation, assignments change based on opponent, but it’s limited the Fire’s ability to develop a tactical identity and for players to develop chemistry.

Still: I think the Fire are likely to keep playing three center backs for this one. An interesting wrinkle would be for the team to play out of a 3-4-3, as they did in the last game, but with Maren Haile-Selassie, who has been very effective as a second striker for the team, supporting Hugo Cuypers with Brian Gutiérrez.

Past that, the only change likely is keeping Gastón Giménez in the lineup – as Klopas said, he’s hard to take out at this stage. Tobias Salquist made a welcome return to the pitch for the Fire, but I think it’s unlikely that he’ll move from a handful of minutes to a start in a match.

The Fire do have skill throughout the lineup and they’ve come off a number of good defensive performances. No one would pick the Fire as favorites against a talent-laden Miami squad, regardless of whether or not Messi is in the lineup, ,but they can play spoiler, keeping the Supporters Shield race interesting and the Fire in the conversation for a postseason spot with a strong performance at the expense of a team with multiple players unavailable.