The Chicago Fire entered the 2020 season with lots of changes:
A new name: Chicago Fire FC
A new logo
New management: Sporting Director Georg Heitz, and Coach Rafael Wicky
17 new players on the roster
A new home venue: Soldier Field
But after six matches in a season full of fits and starts, they have just four points on their account and no goals scored in their last three games. Is this progress? Can the Fire even be assessed properly in a season so fundamentally affected by COVID-19?
The upheaval within the club began last December, barely giving Heitz enough time to assemble a credible player pool. Some of the new signings were still making their way to Chicago in early March and were not able to take the field before MLS shut down due to the pandemic.
Wicky had a bit more than two weeks to organize full training ahead of the MLS Is Back tournament in July and his team left Orlando after playing three matches in the group stage. Although Chicago avenged their opening-week loss to Seattle at the tournament, two shutout defeats against San Jose and Vancouver sealed their fate.
The Fire played a 3-5-2 system in all three matches and it did not appear to be the best fit for their personnel. Or did this group simply need more time together? In Orlando, the Fire consistently left a lot of space open on the flanks. Three players were rotated as wingbacks: Miguel Navarro, Przemyslaw Frankowski, and Jonathan Bornstein. Navarro was especially guilty of failing to secure the wide areas. Overall, none of the three did enough to provide support for the attack. As a result, the Fire became a counterattacking team at MLS Is Back. Striker Robert Beric finished off a great chance against Seattle, but opportunities in the other two matches were sparse. The Fire did not look like a team ready to stamp their authority in any of the three games.
Their early exit from MLS Is Back gave the Fire nearly a month of training before the league resumed play, scheduling six matches over three-plus weeks for all teams, with an emphasis on regional rivalries. On Thursday, the Fire traveled to Columbus and were smacked with a 3:0 defeat. What did Wicky and his players learn from their preparation and subsequent performance?
Wicky installed a 4-2-3-1 formation, a change which improved the Fire’s overall quality, despite the lack of goals. The Fire attack actually looked cohesive at times and they looked like a team with a plan, Navarro started at left back and still had problems taking account of the Crew’s right flank, but Frankowski, installed as a traditional winger, looked far more lively than he did in Orlando. Holding midfielder Gaston Gimenez finally looked the part, and the central trio, which included Alvaro Medran and Ignacio Aliseda, provided a basis for attacking ideas. The Fire’s finishing, however, was severely lacking. The team’s defensive errors were their downfall and Columbus did enough to take home the points.
A former Chicago assistant coach once told me that a team’s quality cannot be judged until they have played at least ten games together. The Fire have only played six games so far and they’ve needed almost six months to do so. With the major upheaval in the player pool, Wicky has examined his players in various roles and formations and may even need more than ten games before he’s satisfied with his choices for his top 11 players. The path to attaining consistency and cohesion is a long one and this Fire squad needs to get a string of games under their belt more than anything else.
(Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
Be First to Comment