The Fire return home for their last game at Soldier Field until the end of August 31st desperately seeking a win before heading out on the road for two games over the next week.

They’re hosting New York City FC, the youngest team in the league by average age and one that overcame a slow start by a lengthy period of winning before cooling off somewhat. In his sophomore year as Head Coach, Nick Cushing has adjusted his team’s tactics and seen results pick up, but other teams have taken notice and injuries, including to star player Maxi Moralez, have hampered his squad in recent weeks.

New York City FC

Overview

Nick Cushing is a long-time employee of City Football group, and headed Manchester City’s women’s side for nearly a decade before being named an assistant to NYCFC in 2020. After the 2022 season, he was given the keys to the car and disappointed fans in 2023 as the team failed to reach the playoffs for just the first time since missing out in their inaugural 2015 season.

In 2024, he was widely considered to be a leading candidate for the first head coach to lose their job after his team lost four of their first five games, but suddenly, unexpectedly, the team turned a corner, drawing two matches and winning eight of their next nine. Banners calling for Cushing’s departure – once a common site – have all but vanished.

The young squad (Maxi Moralez, 37, is the lone player over 30 years of age and one of just six over 25) is filled with talent, courtesy of the scouting network and of City Football Group. The team still doesn’t look like a real contender, and they’ve struggled with consistency – not entirely unexpected from a team this young – but they do look like a lock for the postseason and have a much more solid-feeling foundation to build on.

How Did Nick Cushing Turn Things Around?

Unlike their cross-town (well, river, state line) rivals, the Pigeons never really tried to mimic the tactics of the parent club in Europe – in this case, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City – but they did share some ideas tactically. NYCFC spent most of 2023 trying to hold the ball in possession and maintain good field possession.

When that works – which it does for Manchester City – it works, but it’s like playing with a full orchestra. The sound can be beautiful, but if one member is playing a half-note off, it sounds worse than a quartet.

The team arguably has the talent to play that way, but the conductor is Moralez, the oldest player on the squad by over a decade. He distributes the ball beautifully and at his peak for the Pigeons – which was back in 2019 – he had 20 assists on the year. He was sent to Racing Club in Argentina (his original team) ahead of the 2023 season before returning midyear, but injuries have limited his contributions, and he’s had just six appearances (two starts) for the team this year, and under 200 minutes.

“Next man up” mentality only gets you so far, and there really isn’t a replacement for Moralez on the roster. With the Argentine injured (as he is, again), Cushing flipped the game model on its head.

The team started lying deeper in possession, encouraging teams to come to them, and then would spring the ball forward, which works because Santi Rodríguez is an excellent open-space attacker playing in the No. 10 central attacking midfield role.

The team has started lying deeper in possession, creating space down the pitch then counterattacking with direct balls. That suits a young team and even though it’s not really the Red Bull model of football – the team can still string together passing sequences – like gegenpressing, it’s really raised the floor of a team that doesn’t feel like it has yet to come close to its ceiling.

The team has the third fastest attacking speed in MLS according to Opta, behind D.C. United and St. Louis City. Both of those teams, however, are dead last in passes per sequence, but the Pigeons are just under the middle of the pack.

They are fast, but they aren’t always direct, and they’ve got a ton of talent in the midfield to unsettle defenses.

Who Will Be in the Starting XI for New York City?

With few exceptions, the team has been playing out of a four player back line this season, sometimes listed as a 4-2-3-1, sometimes a 4-3-3. When Maxi Morales is available (he’s not for this one), it’s closer to a 4-2-3-1, with Alonso Martínez as the sole striker and Santi Rodríguez and Hannes Wolf, who arrived before the start of this season, on the wings with Moralez pulling the strings from the No. 10 possession.

When Moralez isn’t available, however the team formally lines up, Santiago Rodríguez becomes the playmaker but is fundamentally a speedier, more direct player. The team’s midfield – typically consisting of James Sands and Keaton Parks, one of the better duos in the league – are joined by one other player, possibly Andrés Perea for this one.

Ahead of GK Matt Freese, Kevin O’Toole has been cooking this season as an attacking left back with a lot of offensive upside Tayvon Gray, just 21 years old, has looked fully starter quality on the right. At center back, Thiago, whose been a mainstay for the team over the past three seasons is typically joined by Burk Risa, but the Norwegian is injured so look for Stahinja Transijević to get the nod.

Chicago Fire

Full Circle

What can be said about the team’s 1-0 loss to last-place San Jose last week that hasn’t been said? They posed few questions for San Jose’s back line, and they asked them slowly enough that the defense was fully prepared.

The team perked up a bit after going down, but really never seemed that hungry. Asked about the team’s performance after the loss, Assistant Coach Paulo Nagamura – in charge for the match with Frank Klopas serving a one-game suspension for stepping onto the pitch during the game midweek– said “We came with the mentality that we want to throw the first punch and go after the game right away. And I thought that we waited to get punched first and then react. We had no urgency from the beginning. And I think that was the difference.”

He later added, “I don't think that we deserve the loss, but that's how games go. When you are not fully engaged, not fully concentrated for 90 minutes, one little mistake will punish you, and I think that was the case tonight.”

The wording was careful – he didn’t say the team deserved to win. They didn’t. To deserve to win in a league where every team has offensive talent that can sting you, you need to be locked in for the full 90. Did the Quakes also have some gaffes? Yes, so the comment’s fair, but the Fire didn’t find a way to punish them for it.

Failures of concentration combined with often lackluster execution. Remember New York City FC having one of the fastest attacks in the league? The alternative strategy is often called “slow and intricate” - string together more passes in possession, with the next result that you move up the pitch slower.

The Fire are one of two teams in the league that is below-average for both passing sequences (at 3.37, versus a league average of 3.61) and attack speed (at 1.72 m/s, compared to an average of 1.78). The other team is Supporters Shield-leading FC Cincinnati, but don’t let that fool you: FC Cincinnati mixes ball retention with direct attacks to bring the average down. The Fire play nothing like FC Cincinnati, their opponent midweek, which is why the Fire have 28 goals on the year compared to FC Cincinnati’s 32.

The Fire had been playing faster, and even if it wasn’t masterclass-level anything, it was enough to unsettle defenses and give Maren Haile-Selassie and Hugo Cuypers time and space to create (and execute) threats. They need to get back to that if they want to beat NYCFC.

Finally Some Good News

Although no one is making excuses for the Fire’s results, it’s noteworthy how banged up the squad has been, particularly on the back line. Andrew Gutman, Tobias Salquist and Carlos Terán all were expected to get a lot of minutes for the team this year, and all three have been out – the former two for an extended period, alongside Chase Gasper.

Conceding simple, careless goals – as the Fire have done far too often this season – well, frankly, those are a lot more likely to happen when you’re missing key defensive starters as the Fire have been.

Luckily, there is positive news on that front. Salquist seems healthy enough to play (though Frank Klopas has always stayed on the side of caution when bringing guys back). Gutman, Terán and Federico Navarro are also back on the pitch training, though not yet integrated with the group.

The defense hasn’t been horrible over the past few games, but there have been individual moments – the lapses in concentration that Nagamura brought up – that you’d have to think would be less likely with starters. Rotating players in an out – we were told Jonathan Dean was a late scratch in favor of Chris Mueller – can also cause make it harder to coordinate the defense.

I asked Chris Brady about it, who said it’s “not ideal,” but also “I'm pretty familiar with everybody and how they play and what they expect from me and what I expect from them. Obviously, it throws you for a bit of a loop if last minute you're hearing that guys are not ready to go. But ultimately what they do give us is our roles and we should, and are, able to plug in different players to different roles. So for example, if our set piece guy gives Jonny Dean a specific role, but last minute he's not ready to go, we have to put [Chris] Mueller in that role, it's on me and on the back line and it's on Mueller to know exactly what to do. I think we handled that pretty well from the set piece standpoint. Not just set pieces in general. It does throw you for a little bit of a loop but as a professional, you've got to know what to do.”

A back line that’s consistent could well be a literal game changer for the team: an individual mistake, a few seconds of a defender not being in the right place when the opponent is attacking is often the difference between a 0-0 draw and a 1-0 loss. A back line that’s consistently healthy is more likely

Who Will Be in the Starting XI vs. New York City FC?

Let’s get this out of the way: Once again, Shaqiri will play for the Fire. The team’s laissez-faire attitude to having the highest-paid player in team history return for three of the final 12 games of his contract speaks volumes.

Tobias Salquist, however, might return, but if he does, I suspect it’d be as a cameo, to let him get his sea legs under him. The biggest question is whether Chris Mueller will start at wingback. He didn’t have a fantastic performance, but I still think he’s worth playing again in the role. The other option is Dean, who doesn’t really give the same attacking dimension. Playing Mueller and Arigoni at wingback lets the team play a lot closer to how it should when Gutman returns from injury.

With Fabian Herbers out (yellow card accumulation), the team has precious few options on the bench to reinforce the midfield. That likely consigns the versatile Mauricio Pineda to the bench, in case he’s needed as reinforcement at center back or in the midfield, meaning the back line should remain unchanged from what we saw in San Jose, with Rafael Czichos, Wyatt Omsberg and Arnaud Souquet starting.

The short bench also means the midfield trio should be Brian Gutiérrez, Gastón Giménez and Kellyn Acosta, with Maren Haile-Selassie and Hugo Cuypers starting as forwards. With three  matches over the next week, it isn’t ideal to have so few options at key positions, but Frank Klopas simply can’t worry about squad rotation for this one: Of the three, New York City FC at home is the one where the team should have the highest expectations of three points. Worry about trips to Cincinnati and Ft. Lauderdale later in the week, and maybe the team will have more options with players returning.