After a disappointing loss in second-half stoppage time, the Fire remain in the 15th and final place in MLS’s Eastern Conference, and are now six points behind Atlanta and Toronto for the final postseason spots.

The team has strange company on the outside of the postseason picture in the Philadelphia Union, a team that is currently in 10th place with just two more points than the Fire after years of competing at or near the top of the league table.

A win won’t propel the Fire into a postseason spot and would be unlikely to push the Union into one, but both teams need points and would love a midweek win so they could look forward to making genuine progress up the table after this weekend’s games.

Note: As the Fire faced Philadelphia earlier this season, this is an abbreviated article focused on updates. Check out that preview for an overview of the Union’s system.

Philadelphia

Overview

I was full of platitudes about what Philadelphia had done over the past few seasons. Since making the playoffs in 2018 after Ernst Tanner came in to the job and Jim Curtin, the former Fire player who’s served as the team’s switched to playing a high-press-and-counter style, the team had become one of the most consistent quality teams in the league, winning the Supporter’s Shield in 2021, making it to MLS Cup in 2022, and feeling like they were competing throughout 2023.

Throughout the first half-and-a-bit of the 2024 season, however, the Union have fallen and they’ve fallen fast: The tam’s one win in the past 10 matches came against a then-hapless New England team in mid-May, and the team’s remaining three wins on the year came in a three-weak burst from late March to early April.

They’ve now lost four in a row, and it’s pretty clear that things aren’t working in (or out) of Chester for Curtin’s side.

Union fans have long wished their team spent just a bit more money. The team may have been one of the most successful in MLS in recent years, but it’s also been one of the least-expensive. Several players have called out the lack of investment in the squad, and Curtin has addressed media questions on the team’s spend with a kind of verbal equivalent of the Gallic shrug.

Adding insult to injury – in a literal sense, as the Union’s squad has been injury-racked in recent weeks on top of missing players to international duty  – the team just sold Julián Carranza, the team’s second highest scorer on the season, to Dutch giants Feyenoord.

Other MLS fanbases often cheer the news of a big sale because it’s a signal that the team will reload. The Union’s faithful have no confidence that ownership will spend to replace Carranza; besides, any replacement won’t be able to arrive for at least a few more weeks, at which point the die may be cast for the Union’s season.

The Union tried keeping the squad together for one more year to give them a chance to compete and win something. It really hasn’t worked.

What hasn’t been working well for the Union?

The Union have had good players, including a number of key contributors that have come up through the academy, one of, if not the, top in the league, but they haven’t had expensive, top-end talent.

They’ve lucked out by finding some tremendous value – the recently-departed Julián Carranza was acquired from Miami for not much more GAM than what it took for the Fire to get Tom Barlow. They’ve played a game model that suits their talent, but perhaps most importantly, they had one of the defensive back lines in the league ahead of one of the best goalkeepers in Andre Blake.

That’s all come apart this year. Blake has been unavailable for long stretches, and when he has been in net, he hasn’t looked as good as he did just a few seasons ago (he started looking noticeably more falliable in 2023). Andrew Rick, an 18-year-old academy product, is likely to start in net for the Union. However well-regarded he may be, as Fire fans have seen, young goalkeepers can be prone to mistakes that can cost a team points.

The defense has just been overworked, and they’ve started to allow sloppy mistakes.

https://twitter.com/cfmontreal/status/1807226643812864085

A quick pass through the midfield to a player who enters the box and is able to create acres of space with a quick stutter step, causing both center backs to become traffic cones as the attacking player shoots and scores?

Fire fans: Stop me if this feels like something you’ve seen from the past few seasons.

The squad has also, increasingly, been dealing with injury issues, past the one to blake. Longtime captain Alejandro Bedoya will be unavailable against the Fire due to injury. Midfielder Mikail Uhre will be out. With midfielder José Martínez still on international duty with the Venezuelan national team and the team having sold Carranza, the Union will be arriving with a very short bench.

Who Will Be in the Starting XI for Philadelphia Union?

For the most part, Curtin has maintained the 4-1-2-1-2 (or 4-4-2 diamond) formation through the squad’s injuries.

The back line is relatively healthy, and they’ll have first-choice players available in Kai Wagner, Damian Lowe, Jakub Glesnes and Nathan Harriel. (Whether the first choice is good enough this year is a determination left to the reader.)

Ahead of them, Leon Flach will likely start in the most defensive midfield position, with Jack McGlynn and Quinn Sullivan playing ahead of him. Dániel Gazdag is the tip of the midfield diamond, and with Carranza gone and Uhre injured, is by far their most dangerous attacking player.

Chris Donovan and Tai Baribo will likely start in the forward positions. They have 516 minutes between them this season; neither are what you’d consider to be first choice. Baribo has two goals, Donovan, none, and neither has clocked an assist.

It’s gotten noticeably darker in Philadelphia.

Chicago Fire

About those PKs…

Chris Brady has had to face down three penalty kicks in the past two games. Sounders fans would tell you that he should have faced at least one more. Considering the Sounders were able to score zero (0) goals in open play against the Fire, the PKs were obviously a difference-maker in Seattle.

It’s an issue that has once again reared its ugly head after being mostly dormant. Last year, the Fire allowed 11 PKs against; no other team in the league allowed more than 7.

Through the middle of the season, the Fire had allowed just three PKs, putting them in the middle of the pack on the year. With three added to their total in just the past two games, they’re now at 6, tied with four other teams for most in the league, and only fractionally better than the pace they hit last year.

It’s a problem, because there are basically no plays in soccer that have a higher chance of becoming a goal than a shot from the spot.

Last week, Allan Arigoni was at fault, hauling a player down by the back of his shirt. This past week, Jonathan Dean gave Seattle a PK opportunity from an eerily similar play. Mauricio Pineda was cited for hauling down the Sounders' Jordan Morris in the box; I believe it looked like he slipped on the wet turf, but either way, the referee did not.

Both Dean and Arigoni’s plays had a lot in common: The defender thought he was beat, there wasn’t a center back behind them to help out (Souquet was level with Arigoni but not closer to goal than Orlando’s attacker), and so it was desperation time.

It needs to stop. Even allowing the defender in alone against Chris Brady wouldn’t have been any more likely to result in a goal than an obvious penalty call. More to the point, the defense needs to be better-organized to prevent plays like that from happening.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of the PKs in Seattle happened after Carlos Terán left with an apparent hamstring injury. That left the Fire with just one natural center back on the pitch, alongside Mauricio Pineda and Arnaud Souquet. The Fire also had only one natural center back against Orlando, when Arigoni’s penalty happened (Terán was paired with Pineda and Soquet).

Both Souquet and Pineda’s games have more of a two-way dimension than what Terán or even Rafael Czichos give the Fire, but neither are a large, physical presence in the box the way Terán, Czichos or Tobias Salquist is, and frankly, they’ve been pushing higher in the pitch, and not always at the right times.

That could very much be an issue again against the Union.

Soccer math: When is 8+3 less than 11?

Garth Lagerwey, working off of work that the analytics staff at the Seattle Sounders did during his time there, has talked about the “9+2” theory. Basically: The preferred Starting XI of a team –  everyone is healthy, no one is away – is “11+0.” If one player is injured, and so a backup has to start? That’s “10+1.” That same player is out for the next match, and one player is called up for national team duty? You’re at “9+2.”

Across the league, MLS teams get about the same results at 9+2 or above. At 8+3, some teams drop off, at 7+4, every team struggles to get results. The framework is useful in understanding how to integrate new players to the lineup, but it’s also useful in evaluating results in the context of player availability.

For the past few matches, the Fire have played with, depending on how you count, four starters out of the lineup: Two normal starters on the back line have been injured in Andrew Gutman and Tobias Salquist.

Between the Fire’s match against Toronto up through the start against Orlando, the team was also short a starting center back, as Czichos was unavailable while he was completing his Green Card process (he was on the bench for one map). Czichos did start next to Terán, but the Colombian was injured in the 30’ and had to be subbed off.

And, of course, Xherdan Shaqiri – who was a starter and still occupies an important Designated Player slot, regardless of what you think of his performances this season – has been out on international duty with Switzerland.

That leaves the team at 7+4, and despite that, the Fire were grinding out results for a time. Blaming the results on injuries isn’t fair, but then again, ignoring the fact that the Fire have been without several starters is to turn a blind eye to a real challenge for the squad.

The Fire have also been short several other contributors: Chase Gasper, the team’s only other natural left back besides Gutman, has also been out, as has Federico Navarro, an occasional starter and often the team’s best way to reinforce the midfield defensively off the bench.

Who Will be in the Starting XI? How Will the Fire line up against Philadelphia?

The Fire should keep the same 3-5-2, 5-3-2 formation that we’ve seen from them in recent games, but there will be challenges.

Allan Arigoni and Jonathan Dean should start in the wingback spots, but man: The Fire are lucky that outside of Gazdag, the Union are very short on attacking threats at the moment. Dean has spent weeks playing on his weaker foot outside of his natural position. Against Orlando two weeks ago, Facundo Torres was able to create time and space to shoot and score a brace at Dean’s expense; he thought he was beat against Seattle yielding a penalty and therefore, the Sounder’s opening goal. Opposing teams are learning that he’s a weak point that can be exploited by pitting him against skilled attacking players, and it wouldn’t surprise me for the Union’s Gazdag to drift to his right to try to have the same game against Dean that Torres did two weeks ago.

The obvious answer is to support him with strong center backs behind; Czichos will likely start on the left but it’s still an area of concern. I suspect Czichos will start alongside Souquet and Pineda, but I really wish Wyatt Omsberg would get another look. The Union’s attack isn’t particularly skilled but it is fast and they do press high and can create space; having two mostly-stay-at-home center backs in Omsberg and Czhicos would help negate that, but I don’t think that’s what we’ll see.

In the midfield, expect Kellyn Acosta to return to the Starting XI. When I asked about his absence and whether it was injury related after the match against the Sounders, Frank Klopas assured me it wasn’t, and cited the team’s three games in the course of a week and need for squad rotation.

Alongside him, Brian Gutiérrez and Fabian Herbers should stay in the XI. In the press conference, Klopas said that the model was generally to “worry about Wednesday on Wednesday,” I’d assume the same holds true on Sunday.

That means I’d expect Haile-Selassie and Hugo Cuypers to stay in the XI. The Fire can simply field a more skilled lineup than the Union at this point in time. That doesn’t make it better, but it does mean that the team should go in thinking that this should be a winnable game in front of a home crowd. Start the lineup that you think wins you the game, hope that you build up a lead early and can rotate players off, and if not, figure out who’s up for the game on Sunday against the Earthquakes – currently last place in the league, who also play midweek against a team outside of the playoffs (St. Louis) after you’ve (hopefully) secured the win and three points on Wednesday.