Following an All-Star “break” that amounted to the team not playing midweek, the Chicago Fire are back in action on Saturday. They’re hosting the New York Red Bulls in the Fire’s final match at Soldier Field until September, and for a midseason MLS matchup, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The New York Red Bulls are currently in 9th place in the Eastern Conference. The Fire, who have a game in hand, sit one point behind. That puts the Fire outside of the postseason picture looking in. With a gap having opened up behind the Fire and the rest of the pack, the math is simple: Get a result against the Red Bulls, wake up in a postseason spot on Sunday.

Is that a factor to the squad? Not according to Head Coach Gregg Berhalter, who said ahead of the match “I think it's fair to say that it's an important game, but they're all important games. But for us, we can't get ahead of ourselves, and even if we win the game on Saturday, guess what happens next time we play, right? So, for us it literally is ‘prepare for one game at a time and put every ounce of energy into that one game.’”

True as that may be, make no bones about it: This feels like a must-win match for the Chicago Fire. Although a draw will technically see the team continue to be ahead of the Red Bulls a points-per-game basis, managing just one point against a conference rival that has already defeated the Fire this season will be a disappointment.

Despite the Fire’s improved form this season, fans have seen their team win in person just twice in ten home games this season. While the Fire’s recent losses at home have come to some of the league’s top teams, the Red Bulls are decidedly not in that category this season. For the 2025 edition of the Fire to have a happier ending than other recent squads, that means getting results against mid-table opponents, particularly at home.

Winning against the Red Bulls may not have the Fire faithful doing front flips Saturday night – that work belongs to Chance The Rapper, playing postgame – but it will keep the team on the right trajectory ahead of a much-needed two week break.

Series History

All time: 32W-16D-22LLast match: April 5, 2025: New York Red Bulls 2-1 Chicago Fire at Sports Illustrated Stadium, Harrison, NJ.Last home match: September 14, 2024: Chicago Fire 2-1 New York Red Bulls at Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.

What to Expect

New York Red Bulls

Every time the Fire have played the Red Bulls over the past several years, these pages have contained some version of the statement that the Fire’s opponent is more associated with a set style of play than any other, and that’s been the case for years.

Over the past year and a half, we’ve talked about how Sandro Schwartz has evolved the tactics from the Red Bulls, adding offensive wrinkles and doing more in possession than the teams have in the past.

Through it all, though, one thing that has been consistent is that the Red Bulls are defensively very good. Ahead of the Fire’s game against the team in April, Berhalter said that he “admired what they did last year, especially with their compactness,” praising the team’s defense. “They move together as a block. They adapt into man versus man situations. And they reduce the space between the lines.”

Well, this is what the Red Bulls looked like last week.

https://twitter.com/MLS/status/1946738568107270531

After the match, Schwartz was incensed that the goal was allowed to stand, and yes, it should have been called offside. And yes, that’s against Inter Miami and yes, game state matters: Down by two goals with half an hour to go, sure, you take risks. But that’s still a ton of space for the through ball and if you asked a tactician to draw up a diagram of “how to have guys back but not defend,” it’d likely look a lot like what New York were doing in that clip. Lionel Messi could’ve been onside by a mile and still had the same chance given that defensive spacing.

The Red Bulls had started off with a 1-0 lead in that game, and it’s becoming something of a pattern: The team has just one win since May, a 5-3 victory over the New England Revolution the week prior.

They’ve also conceded 35 goals, good for 13th most in MLS. Middle of the pack isn’t bad, but that’s just 4 fewer than they did in all of 2023. It’s not all downside: The team scored just 36 goals that year, so clearly, Schwartz is making the calculation that the tradeoff is worth it, but it’s still not great.

The team is beating their expected goals (xG) scored by a considerable margin, led by 36-year-old Designated Player Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, who leads his team with 13 goals (same as the Fire’s Hugo Cuypers), but has just 6.3 non-penalty expected goals. That’s less than half of Cuypers’ 13.4. They’re also conceding fewer goals than the model says, but not by nearly as significant of a margin.

The Red Bulls have just two wins against teams currently in playoff spots: A 4-2 win over Charlotte in May, and a 2-0 victory over Nashville in March. Their other seven wins come from teams on the outside of the postseason picture, including the Fire – and yet the team is one point ahead of Chicago going into this match.

A lot has been written about how many teams make the postseason in MLS, but that creates a paradox: You can pave yourself a pretty sure path to the playoffs by beating the roughly one-third of teams that don’t make it in. Today, the Red Bulls are proof of that. A Fire victory over the team, however, would put Chicago in that position.

Chicago Fire

With the transfer window open, teams around the league (including the Red Bulls, though their new signing will not be available this weekend pending receipt of a visa) are able, once again, to add players to bolster their squads. While the Fire are looking to add in this window, the most immediate improvements may come from names Fire fans already know.

Center-back has been a key pain-point – both literally and metaphorically – for the Fire all season. Sam Rogers had to leave the game last week with an injury, and although he’s unlikely to be out long-term with it, that still puts more pressure on the position, where the Fire have had two players dealing with long-term injuries.

That may soon be changing, however, with Carlos Terán back in full training this week and Christopher Cupps doing limited activities with the team. Although Berhalter called Terán “day-to-day,” my gut feeling is that if he’s close, he’ll start.

In Terán’s last full game before his injury playing against FC Cincinnati in April, he played the full 90 minutes against Inter Miami and did more than his part to frustrate Messi and the slate of skilled attacking options which that squad brings to bear. It was the kind of performance that showed why he has been on the radar of a number of teams in Europe, and it was refreshing to see a smart, disciplined performance against a high-octane offense from the Colombian defender who is still somehow only 24 years old.

If he can find that form again and manage to stay healthy, he (and eventually Cupps) can go a long way to providing the stability that the team needs next to Jack Elliott as they work on improving the defensive side of their game after drastically improving the offense over the course of this season.

Projected Starting XI

Match Information and How to Watch

Date and Time: Saturday, July 26, 2025, 7:30 PM CTForecast: Temperatures in mid 70s with light rain possibleLocation: Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.TV: Apple TV – MLS Season PassRadio: WLS 890 AM and wlsam.com (English), Que Buena Fire via the Uforia App (Spanish).