Served Cold: Chicago Fire vs Houston Match 7 Preview

The Fire return home to Soldier Field this Saturday as they host the Houston Dynamo. The home side will be looking for revenge on the Dynamo, who last year forced an unceremonious end to the Fire’s U.S. Open Cup campaign at the tournament quarterfinals in a match where many fans felt bad officiating was a major factor in the Fire’s defeat.

Houston went on to win the competition, besting out a Messi-less Inter Miami in the final, giving Head Coach Ben Olsen a trophy in his first year with the team.

The last two times these teams met for a Chicago home game, they’ve been high-scoring affairs, with the Dynamo bagging four goals in the U.S. Open Cup match, the same number the Fire managed the last time Houston played at Soldier Field.

If the Fire can exact revenge, it will be served chilled, if not cold: Temperature at kickoff will likely be in the 40s, a far cry from the highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s that Houston experiences at home.

Series History

All time: 8W-8D-13LLast Match: June 6, 2023: Fire 1-4 Houston at SeatGeek Stadium, Bridgeview, Ill. (U.S. Open Cup)Last Match (MLS regular season): June 25, 2022: Houston 2-0 Fire at PNC Stadium, Houston, Tex.Last Home Match (MLS regular season): September 23, 2020: Fire 4-0 Houston at Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.

Recent Form

Houston

Record: 3W-1D-1L, 10 pts, 6 GF, 4 GA

Houston opened their season with a 1-1 draw against Sporting KC, a team that they narrowly bested in the MLS Cup Conference Semi-finals last year, before dropping their next league game to the New York Red Bulls at home.

At the time, Houston was juggling league and continental play, with their Open Cup victory earning them a spot in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, where they advanced past St. Louis in the first round before falling to the Columbus Crew by a 2-1 aggregate score in the Round of 16.

Since their exit from the Champions Cup, they’ve strung together a three game winning streak, starting with a 1-0 victory over the Portland Timbers before beating the Colorado Rapids by an identical score on the road.

Last week, they beat the San Jose Earthquakes 2-1 in a bizarre game: Bruno Wilson put the Quakes up 1-0 in the first minute, and his teammate Preston Judd earned a straight red in the 34th minute, putting the team down to 10 men early. Despite the numerical advantage, Houston didn’t level the match until the 81st minute and put themselves ahead just four minutes later, before Quakes player Jackson Yueill got a second yellow deep in second-half stoppage time to send his team down to nine men.

Fire

Record: 1W-2D-3L, 5 pts, 9 GF, 13 GA, -4 GD

The Fire lost 3-0 to Atlanta in a game where the team held their own defensively for the first stretch of the match before the dam broke as Giorgios Giakoumakis put Atlanta up 1-0 just before half.

When asked to assess his team’s performance midweek, Head Coach Frank Klopas identified a lack of offensive production as being the key issue, saying that the team failed at “being aggressive and attacking with pace and trying to get quality service” to Hugo Cuypers.

The loss in Atlanta was the first time the Fire were kept off the scoresheet this season, and gave the team one point in its two game road swing courtesy of their 1-1 draw at New England a week prior.

The Storyline

When the Fire and Dynamo met in the U.S. Open Cup last year, many Fire fans fancied the team’s chances at advancing past the Dynamo and making it to the U.S. Open Cup semi-finals.

There was some reason for optimism: The Dynamo had looked pedestrian in 2022, a year in which, like the Fire, they brought in an international star as a Designated Player – Xherdan Shaqiri for the Fire, and Mexican international Héctor Herrera for the Dynamo – that had largely failed to live up to expectations. Both Herrera and Shaqiri were called disappointments and more than commentator around the league openly questioned their dedication level.

The Dynamo had dismissed their Head Coach Paulo Nagamura (now an assistant with the Fire) late in the 2022 season and in the offseason, replaced him with former D.C. United Head Coach Ben Olsen. The move was not heralded at the time: Olsen was considering, at best, a middling coach in his time with D.C., a man occasionally able to grind out results but who played a largely flavorless brand of counter attacking football.

Except, of course, that isn’t what happened: The Dynamo won the match 4-1 and although referring decisions were a factor, the Dynamo proved throughout 2023 that they were not the team 2022 team, as the Dynamo went on to win the Open Cup and came one win away from a MLS Cup appearance.

Olsen had re-energized his squad and awakened Héctor Herrera, flipping what many had already written off as a bad signing to one of the best playmakers in the league.

The Dynamo’s 2023 season feels like, in many ways, it could have been the Fire’s in an alternate world.

If the Fire can get three points at home against the Dynamo – playing without the injured Héctor Herrera – it will, in many ways, feel put their season back on track. An old adage in MLS is that you haven’t really dropped points until you’ve dropped points at home. Well: The Fire lost a close-fought game to FC Cincinnati in their home opener, but they weren’t outplayed, and in their next home game, got their only win of the season to date, beating Montréal 4-3.

Revenge against the Dynamo may just be what the team needs to give it the confidence that it needs to perform, and with four of the team’s five next games being played at home, turning Soldier Field into a fortress would propel the Fire up the standings.

Will the Fire show that they are capable of having the kind of year in 2024 that Houston did in 2023? Or will the Dynamo prove to the Fire that they are now a cut above their opponents on Saturday?

Houston Players to Watch

Coco Carrisquila: The 25 year-old midfielder from Panama has been a key part of the Dynamo’s success in recent years.  He typically plays in a central midfield role in a 4-3-3 but has also played out wide. In either position, he’s proven to be an insightful playmaker and has carved opposing midfields and defenses apart. Carrisquila was a key part of the young Panama team that many felt punched above its weight – and years – through 2022 World Cup qualifying, and many expect him and Los Canaleros to take the next step up in 2026. Carrisquila left the last match with an apparent injury and has been training on his own, but if he’s capable of playing on Saturday, he’ll be one of the most dangerous players on the pitch.

Ibrahim Aliyu: Fire fans already know that the 22-year-old Nigerian striker can score, since he scored a brace against the team during last year’s U.S. Open Cup match, including the goal in the 59’ that largely put the game away for the visitors. Although Sebastian Ferreira is expected to be the team’s primary striker, a hamstring injury kept him sidelined early in the season and in that time, Aliyu made a strong case to Ben Olsen that he should be part of the Starting XI for the Dynamo.

Fire Keys to Victory

• There are three thirds: In a midweek press conference, Klopas said out loud what a lot of people have observed: That for whatever reason, the team seems to play perfectly fine from their goal line up through about 70 yards up the pitch, and then they stop. The attack gets bogged down, players slow down, and by the time the team is ready to make plays into the final third, the defenses have had so much time to set they could have made pudding. There isn’t a forcefield that hits the team at that point; they just need to keep on a tracking and trust that the right players will be making runs into dangerous areas.
• Make runs into dangerous areas: This was another issue on Sunday – the team just didn’t have players making plays into dangerous areas. On the handful of times that it looked like the Fire might be assembling something truly dangerous, players just seemed to stop at the edge of the 22 yard box or just outside it. That meant that whoever had the ball typically waited before attempting to either pass it, carry it forward or cross it, and, of course, by the time that happened it was often too late. Cuypers isn’t blameless here but it isn’t primarily on him. He’s shown he can score when he gets decent service but if he’s being asked to put on a one-man show in the box, he simply won’t get decent service often enough to matter.

Panel Predictions

Alex Calabrese

This is not the best Houston team ever, so there's no reason the Fire shouldn't be able to compete. I could see them jumping to a two-goal lead, provided that Hugo Cuypers can get the ball inside the penalty box.Prediction: Fire 2-1 Houston

Jiggly Carollo

"If you can't get what you want, then you can come with me." Here's the thing: The Fire suck right now. And they've done nothing to prove that they'll be a playoff caliber team this season. But we've still got a whole season to play and it's not like they're never going to win again. I think this is the sort of game that the Fire wins, even on a bad day. It's the right timing of an opponent who isn't exactly good or bad and it's a home game. So think of this and probably the rest of the month as a quick reprieve from what will likely be more disappointment.

Prediction: Fire 2-0 Houston

Christian Hirschboeck

The fire, who are a team offensively dysfunctional, are hosting the dynamo, a team who have conceded just 30 shots from open play. The Fire are also the team who have conceded the most goals in MLS so far. So on and so forth.Prediction: Fire 0-2 Houston

Tim Hotze

The Fire have no excuse not to get a result against a weakened Houston team at home.

Prediction: Fire 2-1 Houston

Matt Shabelman

Because I believe.

Prediction: Fire 2-1 Houston

Match Information and How to Watch

Date and Time: Saturday, April 6, 2024, 7:30 PM CTLocation: Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.Forecast: 43’F  61% humidity expected at  kickoff, winds NNE at 9mph, 35% cloud cover because and a 3% precipitationTV: Apple TV - MLS Season Pass