Still Burning: Chicago Fire vs Inter Miami CF Matchday 36 Preview
The Fire play their 32nd game of a 34-game regular season on Wednesday night at Soldier Field against the Eastern Conference’s 13th-place team.
Of course, that isn’t the main narrative here, nor the way the game has been presented. The game along Lake Michigan will almost certainly become the Fire’s best-attended regular season game in history, and the team is treating the match as an opportunity for spectacle, distributing more than 40,000 light-up LED bracelets to fans, as the team advertised the match on billboards throughout the city featuring the likenesses of Xherdan Shaqiri and Lionel Messi.
Even if Lionel Messi isn’t in attendance – even if he doesn’t travel with the team for what would be his third-ever match in Chicago – the Fire have historically put on a good show in front of big crowds at Soldier Field, and it should be a night to remember.
Series History:
All time: 3W-1D-1L, 9 GF / 5 GA, 10 pts out of 15Last Match: March 25, 2023: Fire 3-2 Inter Miami at DRV PNK Stadium, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.
Recent Form
Inter Miami
Record: 9W-6D-15L (33 pts)
Inter Miami entered the Leagues Cup with the worst record in MLS. Messi’s arrival helped the team win the Leagues Cup in a storybook-like fashion, but since then, the team has only managed to climb from 29th place in the league to 26th. They’ve gained ground in points but started in a very deep hole.
They managed a single point off a last-minute stoppage time goal on Saturday, salvaging a 1-1 draw vs. NYCFC, but lost 2-1 to the Houston Dynamo in the U.S. Open Cup final Wednesday. Outside of international breaks, the team has been playing two games basically every week since the Leagues Cup.
Their most recent victory was a 4-0 thumping of Toronto FC (who seem absolutely determined to win the Wooden Spoon given to the team with the League’s worst record) on September 20th, a game where Messi featured but had to leave early.
Since Messi’s arrival, the team has yet to win a road game without him.
Fire
Record: 9W-10D-12L (37 pts)
For the first time in eight games, the Fire won a game. Georgios Koutsias’ goal – a nominee for goal of the week honors – was assisted by Xherdan Shaqiri and came on the team's first shot of the game in the 64’, shortly after the hosting Red Bulls went down to 10 men. The game has a poetic symmetry to the match they had 10 days prior, when an early red card saw the Fire reduced to 10 men, unleashing a 3-0 Cucho Hernández hat trick. In between those two matches, the Fire played the New England Revolution to a spirited 2-2 draw.
The Storyline
In one version of this match, this is the story of two teams trying to battle their way into a postseason that has been extended to the extent that Inter Miami, who were 14th in a 15-team Eastern Conference as recently as late August, have a legitimate shot, as do the Fire, who just snapped a seven-game winless skid.
Of course that isn’t the only story going on here - instead, it will be the spectacle – much more than (and possibly much less than) the sporting event that will dominate coverage of the events at Soldier Field Wednesday night.
On Monday night, the team announced that the match had sold out. Given Soldier Field’s 61,500 capacity, that means that the attendance should easily eclipse the 39,529 who saw the Fire draw the New England Revolution 1-1 shortly after seeing the U.S. Men’s National Team draw Poland 1-1 in a doubleheader that saw DaMarcus Beasley feature in both matches. The Fire counts their single-match attendance record as having come on August 8, 1998, when 37,122 came to see their match against the L.A. Galaxy at Soldier Field.
In a way, the match is a second chance at a first impression for Mansueto’s ownership of the Fire: The team had just about finished plans to fill Soldier Field for the team’s first match back in March 2020 before the pandemic intervened.
Given the sheer number, it isn’t an exaggeration to say majority of the tickets sold to Wednesday's game were purchased by those hoping to see Lionel Messi play in his third-ever game at Soldier Field, following a 2013 summer exhibition match and a 2016 group stage Copa América game that pitted the Argentinian national team against Panama, which ended up featuring a Messi second-half hat trick in front of a crowd of 53,885 en route to a 5-0 victory for la Selección de Argentina.
Messi’s participation in Wednesday’s match now seems highly unlikely, but regardless, Wednesday still figures to be a memorable match: The Fire are very much alive in the race for the postseason. A win against Miami, combined with either D.C. or Montréal dropping points, will see the Fire wake up Thursday morning back in a postseason spot.
The Fire have a history of performing well in big games, as does Xherdan Shaqiri, whose performance level throughout his career has seemed to rise with the size of the stage. If they can do that before what could be their largest-ever home crowd, not only do they significantly bolster their chances of making the postseason, but they also might work their way into the hearts of a few more soccer fans in Chicagoland whose love for the game hasn’t translated into match attendance for the city’s only top-level men’s side.
There are plenty of players on the Fire’s roster, including homegrowns Chris Brady and Brian Gutiérrez, two of the brightest young talents in MLS, who have compelling stories and who can put on scintillating displays of football. If those displays can outshine the bracelets being given to fans in the stands, a number of first-time spectators might just come back.
Tactics and Projected Starting Lineups
Inter Miami
Availability Report:
Injured: Ian Frey, Gregore, Corentin Jean, Franco Negri
Questionable: Jordi Alba, Lionel Messi
Suspended: Tomás Avilés
It should be obvious to say, but here it is anyway: This isn’t the same Inter Miami team that the Fire beat in March.
Lionel Messi’s arrival grabbed the headlines, but the changes go much deeper than his arrival alongside former Barcelona teammates Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba.
Phil Neville was replaced by former Barça, Atlanta United, and El Tri coach Tata Martino. Rodolfo Pizarro, the Designated Player that Miami had initially planned to be their first star before he became the poster child of failed signings, is gone.
In addition to the former Barcelona players, Miami added U-22 Initiative players Tomás Aviles (suspended for this match), Facundo Farías, and Diego Gómez in the summer transfer window, and the club brought in heralded Canadian international Kamal Miller about a month after the team played the Fire.
The roster wasn’t tweaked over the course of the season; it was rebuilt.
Even with a midseason coaching change, by October, most MLS teams’ tactics have become relatively predictable, and almost all have settled into one or two formations at the start of matches.
Not Tata Martino, however: In the past five games, only one of which featured Lionel Messi, the Miami boss has used five different formations, alternating playing three, four, and five players in both the back line and in the midfield, and one, two or three players up top.
Part of the reason for the diversity of formations is likely that despite working their way from the conference’s basement into the postseason discussion, the team has actually struggled to find consistent success: Since their Leagues Cup victory, the team has just one win without Messi in the lineup, at home against Sporting Kansas City.
Trying to find a way to win without the G.O.A.T. has been a struggle for Miami, something that is undoubtedly complicated by the fact that without Messi, there isn’t really anyone truly equipped to serve the final ball. Both Benjamín Cremaschi and Farías have been asked to play the role, and both have shown flashes of brilliance, but neither of the young players has been able to perform consistently.
Part of the challenge for Miami is that their game plan is radically different depending on whether Messi is in the lineup, making everything from running drills at practice to discussing tactics a challenge: It’s had enough getting everyone on board with one game plan, but Miami is really having to get the squad ready to play two different styles depending on whether or not Messi is playing.
Without him, as the team is likely to be on Wednesday, they typically rely a lot more on playing the ball out of the back, trying to methodically break down the opposition through the midfield, but it hasn’t worked that well. The team has managed to climb the standings largely off of individual moments and late-game heroics, like the game-tying equalizer in the 95th minute from (the now-suspended) Avilés against NYCFC last Saturday.
Add tired legs to the equation – Wednesday’s game will be Miami’s sixth since September 16 – and the need to keep some legs fresh for their clash against Cincinnati on Saturday, and Martino is likely to continue with new permutations of his roster in the hopes of getting results: With four games left, the team can likely afford to drop points in one more game – and even then, in all likelihood they need a draw, not a loss in that game if they want to make the postseason – so he really can’t allow anyone real time off.
Chicago Fire
Availability Report:
Injured: Victor Bezerra, Chris Mueller, Federico Navarro, Mauricio Pineda
Questionable: Jairo Torres
In a small miracle of miracles, both Rafael Czichos and Brian Gutiérrez were fit enough to make appearances off the bench against the Red Bulls on Saturday. Gutiérrez, who came on in the 71st minute, appeared to suffer some tweak not long after coming on, but he was able to resume playing, and in Monday’s press conference, Fire Head Coach Frank Klopas confirmed that both are ready to go on Wednesday.
Of course, since nothing is ever easy with this team, Jairo Torres – who looked better than he has, if not particularly goal-dangerous – was subbed off in the 51st minute with an apparent leg injury. Regardless, it’s likely that he would have been rotated off of the starting XI for Wednesday’s match anyway.
On rare occasions, Klopas has tried to counter another team’s formation – most recently against the Vancouver Whitecaps – but given the variety of shapes that Tata Martino has used, don’t expect that to be the case here: He’s almost certainly sticking with the 4-2-3-1 that Fire fans have come to know and… well, they’ve come to know it over the past two years, but it does provide a solid template that can fairly easily morph depending on game state.
Chris Brady will start in goal. Carlos Terán will return, and it seems that Rafael Czichos is fit enough to reunite with him as the two center backs. Miguel Ángel Navarro, who had a very strong performance against the Red Bulls, will start at left back.
On the right, however? Arnaud Souquet had been the default starter for most of the season but went through a spate of matches where he did not make it on the pitch. Jonathan Dean has played well with the opportunities that he’s been given, but Souquet still plays more confidently as a wingback – he will sometimes come into the half-space on the attack, whereas Dean’s touches have all come very close to the touchline. A slight hunch, backed by nothing, is that Klopas will stick with Dean on Wednesday, under the theory of “why mess with what worked.”
Ahead of them, Ousmane Doumbia and Gastón Giménez are likely to return in the double pivot – with Federico Navarro still not back from injury, the other option is Fabian Herbers, who played the full 90 minutes on Saturday and his ability to play positions in both the attacking and defensive midfield make him a useful player off the bench. Giménez remained too easy to play through during Saturday’s match, and Doumbia did little to help the team’s shot drought early on,
In the attacking midfield, Jairo Torres’s start on Saturday was probably done in part to give Maren Haile-Selassie rest, and he should resume his duties on the right wing. Although Shaqiri played almost the full match Saturday, he should start in the #10 role in a match as important as this, and he seemed energized by the prospect of playing against this Miami side. To his left, expect Brian Gutiérrez to return to the starting lineup.
At striker, Klopas has a choice – he can return Georgios Koutsias to the starting lineup following his goal-scoring performance Saturday, reward Kacper Przybyłko’s strong play to preserve the lead with a start, or return Kei Kamara to the lineup. Klopas’ decisions on Saturday suggest that the rested Kamara is likely to start, but Koutsias was effective, and Kamara’s effectiveness increases off the bench when he can go full tilt without worrying about the prospect of doing so for 45 minutes, 60 minutes or more.
Fire Keys to Victory
- Shoot. The. Ball: This topic keeps on coming up. Much of the reason that the Fire didn’t register their shot until the 64th minute of Saturday’s game was due to the game plan, which forced the Red Bulls to maintain possession, something that the team is not normally comfortable doing – but the fact is that five shots on goal is simply not enough, particularly not against a goalkeeper of Drake Callendar’s. They need to shoot more.
- The mid can’t be mid: Particularly in a Messi-less Miami squad, whichever team is able to win the most midfield battles will likely prove victorious. Josef Martínez and wingers like Robert Taylor can’t score if they don’t have the ball, and if the Fire are able to recover the ball in the midfield, then they won’t get the ball. Doumbia and Giménez each played like half of the equation on Saturday; they will need to do more on Wednesday, and both the attacking midfield as well as the fullbacks need to be prepared to join in, either defensively or as pass options after the recovery.
- 10 + 10 = W: This is not an algebra equation, but rather an observation that the argument from the beginning of the season about whether who played best at the #10 role – Xherdan Shaqiri or Brian Gutiérrez – is effectively solved by giving both players space to roam as they see fit. At times, this means having Shaqiri starting the attack from the wide areas while Gutiérrez plays centrally; at others, it means having Shaq pulling the strings from the middle, and sometimes it means having Shaqiri and Gutiérrez functioning essentially as dual #10s while using Maren Haile-Selassie’s speed to function as a second striker or be available for the overlapping run. IF they do that, that’s two talented, creative playmakers who can get the ball in dangerous places.
Panel Predictions
Alex Calabrese
The game will live up to the hype under the bright lights of Soldier Field. It will be a special occasion for all involved with lots of goals, and a great advertisement for the sport and league. Fire wins 3-2, and the homegrown kids will be at the center of it.
Prediction: Fire 3 - 2 Miami
John Carollo
Messi doesn't show up and that doesn't matter. We can all make fun of the people that stupidly spent their life's savings on tickets, but maybe we're the real idiots for believing that this team will actually make the playoffs. And the Fire do themselves no favors by throwing out some random halftime show in a game that may well mean elimination from the playoffs. They won in Jersey, but looked terrible doing so. At least Miami found an identity even without Messi, who will possibly still end up on the bench and jog out for five minutes because that's all MLS cares about. Best case scenario, the Fire can smash and grab before Tata unleashes Messi. Worst case, Josef remembers who he is when he sees the Fire. Either way, Busquets will bully the Fire's midfield.
Prediction: Fire 0-2 Miami
Christian Hirschboeck
Messi-less Miami managed to deplete Soldier Field’s potential fans by 50%, however now the Fire can actually be the home team in their own stadium. With that said and playoffs on the line for both teams, neither is going to make the most of this game. Snooze fest inbound.
Prediction: Fire 0-0 Miami
Tim Hotze
Using the same logic as the previous match, if I predict a win it won’t happen. That, and Miami seem to be kings of finding a draw without Messi in he squad.
Prediction: Fire 1-1 Miami
Matt Shabelman
FIREEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Prediction: Fire 2-0 Miami
Match Information and How to Watch
Date and Time: Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 7:30 PM CTLocation: Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.Forecast: 75’F expected at kick off, with 66% humidity, winds SSW at 9mph, 85% cloud cover, and a 19% chance of precipitationTV: Apple TV - MLS Season PassRadio: WLS-AM 890 (English), TUDN 1200 AM (Spanish)
