Opposition Report: Forward Madison
The Chicago Fire II’s second U.S. Open Cup match in team history – and first against a professional opponent – is tomorrow when they host Forward Madison at SeatGeek Stadium. To preview the match, we spoke with Mitchell Meerman, who covers the USL League One side. (Responses have been edited for length and clarity)
Last year, Forward Madison made the playoffs for the first time since 2019 and second time in team history. With that in mind, what are the expectations around the team going into this season?
It’s not just “we should be making the playoffs,” but “we should be competing for the (League One) Cup.” We should be coming out of the regular season – minimum – with a home playoff game. Madison put a lot more money into the squad this season. They brought back a lot of the better players and they brought in some names for USL League One.
They increased the player budget by 20, 25 percent or something like that, so it’s something where if (Head Coach) Matt Glaeser doesn’t put together a team that is getting a home playoff game at a minimum, top four, he’s going to be on a hot seat. And in addition, if they don’t make it to the knockouts of the USL Cup [Note: a new in-season knockout competition for USL League One teams debuting this year], then I think he probably isn’t going to make it to the next season.
Speaking of cups, what do you think the expectations are in the U.S. Open Cup? Obviously, this is the first time that these two teams have met [in a competitive match].
I know that our ownership was not happy losing to the Chicago House last year [Forward Madison lost to semi-pro Chicago House AC 3-2 after extra time in Madison’s first Open Cup game of the season]. It's not like we had a particularly bad lineup that we put out for that game. It’s just the intensity wasn’t there throughout the entire match, because you know you can’t underestimate your competition.
They didn’t do that against Duluth [Madison’s first-round U.S. Open Cup matchup this year], which is a good sign. I don’t think they’ll do that against Fire II as well.
The last three seasons, Forward has played Fire II in pre-season matches. Forward has one all three. That’s not to say that pre-season means everything. There’s a lot of squad rotation, there’s a lot of guys who were trialists. For Fire II, they bring in a lot of guys, the whole squad will change at times so it’s not a one-to-one comparison, but a lot of these guys have played together for years because they’ve come up through the Fire academy. For Forward, there are some pros who at that point in the year have maybe been together for a month and are able to go and win those games.
I think that’s a little bit telling, but that’s not to say that it’ll be the same thing coming into a game like this. I know Fire II has a good squad, I watched a lot of them last year. There’s some great players on that team like Omari Glasgow and Luka Prpa. There’s some killers, and Forward needs to be prepared for that. They just need to do their business in order to walk out of Bridgeview with a win.
You mentioned some of Fire II’s outstanding players. Who are some of those names for Forward Madison this season? Who should Fire fans that are maybe seeing Forward Madison for the first time keep an eye on?
If we were talking about this yesterday [before Forward Madison’s match against Central Valley Fuego on March 29], I would have said Christian Chaney, who scored both goals in the Duluth match.
He’s tied for our all-time leading scorer with 11 goals last year. He got injured in the 13th minute and had to come out in a homecoming game for him, being from Fresno. He always gets up for those games against Fuego. The fact that he came out in the 13th minute and was unable to continue is a really bad sign for him being available Wednesday.
So to highlight two other guys: One is Devin Boyce. Boyce is a midfielder, played with Greenville Triumph last year and the previous two seasons had played with Union Omaha, so that’s a name Fire fans may be familiar with because he was on the Omaha team that beat the Fire in the Open Cup two years ago. He’s a high motor guy, gets in the right places, into ball carriers’ faces. He’s scored two league goals already this season. If he’s playing at his top speed on Wednesday, he’s going to be one of those guys that’s able to keep up with the younger guys on Fire II.
The other I want to highlight is Jake Crull, one of our center backs. Plays mostly on the left side of our three back system. He was All USL League second team last season, and probably deserved first team. He’s a stalwart at the back. He played 45 minutes against Fuego. It’s a good sign for him after not traveling for the first two games of the season for personal reasons, but it looks like he’ll be available (on Wednesday). He does a great job of defending. He does a great job of distribution from the back. He’s able to push up if necessary, which he may not have to do as much with our tactics this season.
He’s one of those real rock solid defenders that you love to see as part of a team that really doesn’t give up a lot of goals, also giving credit to the rest of the back line as well as Bernd Schipmann, our goalkeeper.
You mentioned a bit of this but can you describe Forward Madison’s tactics and style of play?
It’s a little different from last year, where they mostly did a 4-3-3 kind of base, and then in possession were more of a 3-4-3, so they pushed up one of the back line to the wing. This year it’s more of the 3-4-3 base that I’ve seen, with a central striker up top and then a double pivot in the midfield.
So when we’re in a more defensive position, when we feel that we need to bunker down a bit more, we end up pushing our wingers back into the defense and our strikers sort of pull back into the midfield outside of the top striker. So it becomes more of a 5-4-1 in some respects.
If Forward gets out to a lead, I think that may be something that you’ll see a little bit more.
Anything else that might be a factor on Wednesday?
It’s a short week for Madison. We had a game (Friday) in Fresno, and so that gives us a little more time to get back. To get to Fresno from anywhere in the Midwest is pretty hard. We had a terrible trip last year; we had a game Saturday and our flight was canceled on the way back Sunday morning. We had guys who didn’t get back to Madison until Tuesday, because we couldn’t get everyone back on the same flights.
Hopefully, that doesn’t happen this year, but either way, it’s a tough flight, because there’s no direct flights, even from Chicago. Luckily the game Wednesday is only a bus ride, and then Madison doesn’t have their next game until April 13th, their home opener against Richmond.
So honestly, they may just be able to put out everything best they can. It also helped that Madison won (on Friday) 3-0. They were up three at half and then Fuego took a red card early in the second half, so for the last half hour they were kind of able to bunker down and not really work too hard, so I think that’s a good sign for keeping guys fresh for this one.
