Spell Broken: Orlando City 4, Chicago Fire 1
For the second year in a row, the Fire traveled to Orlando early in the summer hoping to turn two convincing wins into a three game winning streak. The Fire outshot and out-chanced their opponent, but for the second year in a row, Orlando played the spoiler, this time dispatching the visitors 4-2. The Fire fought, and controlled the terms of play for the majority of the match, but ultimately were unable to dig their way back from a three goal deficit in the game's first half hour.
The match marks the first time this year the Fire have scored multiple goals and failed to get at least a draw for their efforts. As a result, paired with New England’s 2-1 victory in Cincinnati, the Fire now find themselves in the 15th and last place of the Eastern Conference standings for the first time this season. Orlando’s win is just the second at home this season for the hosts, who to date have had a mirror opposite of their 2023 campaign that saw the team land second in the overall MLS table at the the end of the year.
Orlando entered the match tied with an identical record to the Fire but behind on goal differential, with key players including Luis Muriel and Facundo Torres having disappointing seasons to date. Both woke up against the Fire, however, as part of a positive run of form since the team switched into a 4-4-2 formation that had improved the team’s play, but which, until tonight’s match against the Fire, had failed to yield the team a win.
Fire head coach Frank Klopas wasn’t looking for change: he kept the same starting lineup that secured a victory in Toronto last week, giving Mauricio Pineda his 100th start for the Fire – the first homegrown player in club history to become a centurion. The significance wasn’t lost on team captain Fabian Herbers, who used the occasion to reflect on the team’s academy, saying “you’ve got a lot of young talent in and around Chicago and the club can capitalize on that and make them work, earn those starts… they’re hard workers, they earn it, they’re super talentful.”
Orlando head coach Óscar Pareja, likewise, mostly stuck to his lineup, despite a congested schedule that saw the team play Charlotte midweek and a match coming up on Friday. Ultimately, he made just one change to his lineup, playing César Araujo in lieu of Felipe in the midfield.
The lineups weren’t the only things that would be familiar. For the second time this season against the Fire, Orlando’s Facundo Torres opened the scoring in the 4th minute. This time, the Uruguayan midfielder was slotted a line-breaking pass from Dagur Dan Þórhallsson and buried it from just inside the box, putting his team up 1-0 early.
The Fire, who have battled back from deficits for most of the results this year, weren’t bowed. In the 11th minute, Maren Haile-Salassie had a fantastic look at Orlando goalkeeper Mason Stajduhar’s net from inside the box but sent the shot high. The team continued pressure against Orlando following, but Allan Arigoni hauled down Orlando’s Iván Angulo just after he entered the penalty area in the 19th minute using a move that might’ve been allowed in a rugby match but one that’s a clear penalty in soccer. Luis Muriel converted the opportunity from the spot to put the hosts up by two goals.
After that, Orlando were content to sit back and let the Fire have the ball, preventing the Fire from employing the strategy of using a high-press to win back balls in advantageous places that had served them well in their run of good form over the past few matches.
As the first frame wore on, Orlando were clearly the more comfortable of the two teams, and in Orlando’s next stretch of real possession, Þórhallsson again laid a perfectly-waited pass, this time Iván Angulo who shot it past Brady from point-blank range to put Orlando up 3-0. For the remainder of the first half, the Fire pressured Orlando but the home team was happy to sit back and absorb pressure in the Florida heat, and the teams returned to the locker rooms at half with the hosts comfortably in control.
On the restart, Frank Klopas, trying to find the offensive spark that had eluded the team, performed a tactical shift, bringing on winger Chris Mueller – a former Orlando City player – in favor of Allan Arigoni, giving the team four players in the back line for the first time in the past five matches. Whether because of the shift or simply as a continuation of the pressure that the Fire had held for the last stretch of the first half, the Fire continued to knock on the door. In the 47th minute, Gutiérrez had a shot from the top of the penalty arc but it landed squarely in Stajduhar’s arms. It was a harbinger, of sorts.
In the 51st minute, Maren Haile-Selassie played what was a fairly innocent-looking pass into the box but it hit Orlando defender Rodrigo Schlegel’s arm as he slid on the ground to defend it, earning the Fire a penalty kick. Despite the presence of Cuypers, the team’s record signing, and Gutiérrez, the team’s now-dominant playmaker on the pitch, Haile-Selassie took the shot himself and converted, bringing his team within two goals in the 53rd minute. When asked about the shottaker selection after the match, Klopas was equanimous, saying “obviously there’s an order but at the end of the day, it’s like, ok. You know, someone has a lot more confidence at that moment, or you know, he picked the ball and put it on the spot and scored, so you know, there’s no issue… There’s an order, one, two, three but in the end, they sorted it themselves.”
On the restart, however, Orlando took the initiative- - one of the few times they’d had any real presence on the ball since going ahead 2-0 – and Facundo Torres scored his second of the night in the 60th minute, putting the game squarely in his team’s hands.
The Fire dominated the remainder of the half, and Hugo Cuypers scored his seventh goal of the season in the 69th minute, sliding in the box to slot the the ball past Stajduhar and stretching his goal-scoring streak to four games and making the score 4-2, but that was as close as the team would get.
They finished the night outshooting Orlando 19-8, doubling Orlando’s shots on target 12-6, but with half the home team’s numbers in the only stat that matters, getting outscored 4-2.
Last year, the team’s loss in Orlando was a bump in an otherwise smooth road that saw the team on a winning stretch lasting over a month. When asked about the comparison to last year’s results, Klopas said talked about the importance of starting games on the right foot, saying “we let ourselves down with the start that we had and that’s why I feel bad because I know how hard this group has worked. I know the work they put in for it, I know the quality of players. We have to be mentally and physically ready from the time the whistle goes."
This year, with the fixture earlier in the team’s schedule, if they can again bounce back from a negative result in central Florida and carry momentum into the Leagues Cup, they can avoid a repeat of last season’s disappointing end, but with the team in the last place in the conference, the team simply can’t afford to drop points on many more occasions if they want to avoid the same playoffless fate as they’ve had in recent seasons. The Fire's next match is next Saturday in Cascadia against Seattle, a region where the Fire had a lengthy stretch of futility before finally getting results in recent seasons.
