Wake Up: Chicago Fire at New York Red Bulls Matchday 35 Preview
The Fire travel to Harrison, New Jersey, to face the New York Red Bulls, a team level with them on points but behind in the standings due to tiebreakers.
The point - and, more importantly, dropped points from teams above and below them in the standings, meaning that the playoffs remain a possibility, though a growingly faint one.
Both teams are on the outside of the postseason picture. A win for either side, combined with losses or dropped points from the clubs above them, would have that team knocking at the door of the postseason.
Will the Fire be the ones to take that step up? Or will they fade away into the night?
Series History:
All time: 30-14-21, 104 GF / 88 GA, 105 pts out of 198Last Match: April 29, 2023: Fire 1-1 Red Bulls at Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.
Recent Form
New York Red Bulls
Record: 8W-10D-12L (34 pts)
Going into their match in Washington D.C. last weekend, the Red Bulls had been struggling - with just one win since the Leagues Cup, at home against D.C. Since the start of July, they had managed to score more than one goal in a game just once in MLS play. A major rain storm was drenching Audi Field before, during and after the game, creating conditions that were far from ideal for football.
Christian Benteke, D.C.’s star forward, dropped a first-half hat trick on the Red Bulls. And yet? The Red Bulls managed a 5-3 factory, including an Omir Fernández brace and goals in stoppage time after each half. Impressive, but those five goals? They are one-sixth of RBNY’s entire goal output for the season.
Fire
Record: 8W-10D-12L (34 pts)
After a team-record 511’ drought, the Fire found the back of the net last Saturday, scoring two goals against the New England Revolution and tying the game 2-2. The game was the second draw since the Leagues Cup for the Fire, but those are the only points they’ve managed, going 0W-2D-5L in that stretch.
The Storyline
The storyline from here on out is one thing until it isn’t: Push to make the playoffs.
Both teams go into Saturday’s matchup with just four games left as the first game of three in the span of a week for each club. Both teams have had more than a fair share of ups and downs over the course of the 2023 season – both having dismissed their head coach in the spring – and both clubs managed a string of results that pushed them into the playoff picture, before fading after the Leagues Cup break.
Making the postseason would mean a lot to the locker room of either club, but they’re coming at things from polar ends of the spectrum: The Fire would like to return to the postseason after missing out for the past five years. The Red Bulls, meanwhile, have made the playoffs each of the past 13 seasons, a stretch going all the way back to 2010, the first year they played in Red Bull Arena. That ties Seattle’s record for consecutive playoff appearances which ended in 2021, and RBNY would love nothing more than to have sole ownership of that streak.
It truly is “do or die” time for both clubs, however: Although teams around them have been dropping points, historically, about 43 points makes it in - and with both teams on 34 points with four games remaining, that leaves a cushion of one loss, at most, to make it in.
It’s possible that this could be one of those years where the barrier is lower, but neither club wants to count on it, and even then, the odds are against both teams.
A run to the postseason would be improbable for either club, but “beating the odds” is one of the oldest tropes for postseason-bound teams.
Both clubs should be hungry for a win, particularly since both teams face tough matches in the middle of next week: The Red Bulls travel to FC Cincinnati, and the Fire face a surging Inter Miami.
A loss in one of those upcoming games won’t be fatal for either team’s postseason prospects. A loss in both almost certainly will. With both teams level one ins, in the event the extremely unlikely happens and it comes down to tiebreakers between the two clubs for a postseason spot,with wins as the first tiebreaker, it’s best to get one here and now.
Tactics and Projected Starting Lineups
New York Red Bulls
Availability Report:
Injured: Lewis Morgan, Serge Ngoma, Dante Vanzeir
Questionable: Steven Sserwadda
Suspended: Sean Nealis
The Red Bulls are twins with the Chicago Fire in that they both fired their head coaches within an hour of each other on May 8th. At the time, the Red Bulls had the second-worst record in the league and only one win to their name; the Fire were slightly better off, two points ahead of the Red Bulls – a gap the New York club has since closed. The Red Bulls have managed to climb the standings a bit, though it might be more to the point to say that Colorado and Toronto have been dedicated to sinking but are still below where many expected them to be this year.
Does that rest on the shoulders of their new head coach, Troy Lesesne? Ultimately, probably not: He’s been handed the 25th smallest payroll in a 29-team league, and even then, his two Designated Players have combined for just 2,423 minutes – and a mere 745 of those have come from forward Dante Vanzier, whom the team had hoped would be a reliable goal scorer. He had the pedigree – an in-prime player who has been on the fringes of a very good Belgian national team – but it just hasn’t happened. That’s partly because he just hasn’t been very effective and partly due to his limited minutes, largely due to injury, though he was suspended for six games for use of racist language in April.
Lesesne could also argue that his team hasn’t had the results they deserve: Based on data from Opta, the team is sixth in the league in expected goal differential, at +9.9, and the five clubs ahead of his – Seattle, Cincinnati, LAFC, Columbus and Vancouver – are all in playoff spots, mostly by comfortable margins (things are tight in the West).
That’s largely due to how stingy the team has been on defense: Their expected goals against (also per Opta) is just 30.5, the second lowest in the league after only Seattle. They’re middle of the pack in expected goals for, at 40.4, but both figures are far off from where the team actually is: They’ve scored just 30 goals this season (five of them last Saturday) and allowed 37. Add that all together, and the team’s actual goal differential is a remarkable 16.9 off from where the numbers suggest they should be.
Through it all, however, the Red Bulls still play Red Bull-style football: High pressing, force turnarounds, carry the ball forward quickly on counters.. RBNY hasn’t had much of the ball, but then again, they don’t want much of it.
Lesesne’s brand of high-energy football typically involves playing four backs along with a midfield four and, typically, two strikers – yes, that’s a 4-4-2. In their version of it, the midfield quartet tends to stay compact centrally to draw opposition players in to block passing lanes, giving the fullbacks, who press forward, plenty of space in the wide areas of the pitch. In the chance that there is time and space, the team will advance the ball to one of the forwards, who also typically play centrally.
With Vanzier out for the remainder of the regular season with an injury at striker, that leaves an opening at striker. Elias Manoel has been playing pretty well and should start, but the other spot?
The smart money is on Cory Burke, a certified Fire slayer. He scored the late match-tying goal when the teams last met, his 10th career goal against the Fire in 10 appearances across all competitions (in MLS, he’s scored eight goals in nine matches, and notched an assist).
Burke wasn’t in the matchday lineup last week but Lesesne would be nuts not to start a player who has been Kryptonitte for the Fire over the past five seasons.
Chicago Fire
Availability Report:
Injured: Victor Bezerra, Chris Mueller, Federico Navarro, Mauricio Pineda
Questionable: Rafael Czichos, Brian Gutiérrez
You want the good news? Brian Gutiérrez seems to have escaped long-term injury. You want the bad news? As of midweek he wasn’t training with the full team, and neither was Rafael Czichos. Though both are likely to travel to New York, neither is likely to play on Saturday.
With Mauricio Pineda also injured, that, at least, makes Frank Klopas’s choice of center back pairing easy – it’s going to be Carlos Terán and Wyatt Omsberg, barring something very unexpected, like playing in a formation other than a 4-2-3-1 (please, please, do not do this). Arnaud Souquet should feel rested following his suspension and should be good to start, though Johnny Dean did play well last week, and Miguel Ángel Navarro should start on the left in front of Chris Brady.
The Fire’s injured list continues to the midfield, though, with Federico Navarro still out. That leaves the choices in the double pivot as Fabian Herbers, Gastón Giménez, and Ousmane Doumbia.
Herbers, though, can also play on the wing, and that’s likely where he’s needed with Gutiérrez out. That means it will probably be Giménez and Doumbia, both of who were pretty effective in the last game - Giménez saw an offensive hunger that we haven’t really seen in the better part of two years, and Doumbia looked more like the player capable of frustrating Club América’s players than the anonymous MLS midfielder that it felt like he’d settled into in the prior few matches.
There is a solid argument that Herbers is best left on the bench – he plays a very high-energy game and that intensity just can’t last a full 90 minutes, he’s looked more effective as a substitute than a starter, and with other injuries, and the team doesn’t really have a backup option at the double pivot other than him.
Still, he’s likely the best option to start on the wing – Jairo Torres simply doesn’t have his speed or pace, and that will come in very useful against a team like the Red Bulls (he has also yet to score in nearly two full seasons with the team, while Herbers has four goals, just one off of Kei Kamara’s for the team lead). That means he will likely start at the right, Maren Haile-Selassie will start at the right – though truth be told, he has not looked nearly as good there as on his preferred right side – and Xherdan Shaqiri will start in the middle.
Kei Kamara has been the preferred starter at the lone forward position, and there’s a strong temptation to put him there again: He has the skills and résumé, but the simple fact is he has been starting. And he hasn’t been scoring. His last goal in any competition came back in the Leagues Cup against Minnesota in late July. His last MLS goal was a month earlier.
What do both of those games have in common? He was started on the bench and came on as a sub. When he was added to the roster, the assumption was, given his age and prowess, that he would be a dangerous option off the bench, not a game-in, game-out starter. That’s how he should be used. Give him about a half hour to give it 110% and try to get goal #145, tying him for second all-time in MLS. But start Georgios Kousias, for both players’ sake.
It is a busy week – the last busy week of the season, and some amount of squad rotation may well be necessary. Hopefully, some players will come back off the injured list to spread the load, but regardless, it is truly a do-or-die week. The team simply can’t afford to keep good players off for minute management; they can’t leave anything to chance in any of their four remaining games.
Each matchday has to be a case of trying to get on the board early and then possibly considering game management after things look to be in hand. Do die.
Fire Keys to Victory
- Past due: This is more of an observation than a tactic, but Kei Kamara is past due for #145. Shaqiri is arguably past due for a goal from open play, too. Guti may be the better #10, but he likely won’t be available, and if anything, being down bodies should make Shaqiri’s task all the plainer. The Fire’s chances improve dramatically if one or both of them put together the kinds of performances that they’ve shown in their lengthy careers.
- Go Wide: The Red Bulls like to play centrally and suck in numbers into the middle of the pitch to create options wide, but that also means that if you can win the ball back, the Red Bulls don’t have great coverage wide – particularly when they ask their fullbacks to press forward, as both (but particularly John Tolkin) are likely to do. Doumbia has shown flashes at being the ball-eating #6 who can win the ball back through the opposition – if he can do that and then play the ball wide, the Fire should have time and space to set up an attack.
- Time’s up: There’s now ay to sugarcoat this: It is do or die time for the Fire. They haven’t had a win in league play since mid-July, and yet they are on the fringes – outside looking in, but still the fringes – of the postseason due to a very, very forgiving format. The team simply needs to decide – do they want to be a playoff team? If so, they need to get a result, whatever the circumstances.
Panel Predictions
Alex Calabrese
I've seen this before.
Prediction: Red Bulls 4-1 Fire
John Carollo
I'm just here to spread Adnan's propaganda about how Cory Burke always scores on the Fire. That will happen, despite him not making it to their bench in their past game. He always scores against the Fire. As for the other 21 guys out there, the Fire have continued to show no real attacking promise. Shaqiri is back, so that's nice, I guess. Whatever. The season was over months ago.
Prediction: Red Bulls 3-1 Fire
Christian Hirschboeck
In a battle of mid versus mid, who will come out less mid? In a make-or-break game for a playoff spot, do the Fire have what it takes to finally get back into a post-season position? Do we even deserve it? I cannot answer any of these questions, but I do think the Fire have a better roster than NYRB. Therefore, I am anticipating a win here. Shaqiri is back, unfortunately, but one of Kacper or Kei is due for a goal, so with that said I think the Fire will just get by.
Prediction: Red Bulls 1-2 Fire
Tim Hotze
If I predict that the Fire will win, they won’t. So let’s say a draw - somehow, both teams manage to shoot themselves in the foot and further hurt their already bleak postseason chances because that seems to be the season both teams have committed themselves to.
Prediction: Red Bulls 1-1 Fire
Matt Shabelman
(Quote unprintable)
Prediction: Red Bulls 0-5 Fire
Match Information and How to Watch
Date and Time: Saturday, September 30, 2023, 6:30PM CTLocation: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, NJForecast: 63’ expected at kick off, with 94% humidity, winds WNW at 11mph, 85% cloud cover and a 95% chance of precipitationTV: Apple TV - FreeRadio: wlsam.com (English), TUDN 1200 AM (Spanish)
