What We Now Know About the 2020 Chicago Fire

After 20 matches, many things have finally become clear about the Chicago Fire and their 2020 evaluation will be a mix of positives and negatives.

The Fire have been drifting above and below the playoff line in the Eastern Conference for the past few weeks. The cockeyed scheduling that was made necessary by COVID-19 considerations resulted in a very forgiving playoff format that provides a second chance to many questionably worthy teams. Let’s face it, a Fire team that has amassed just 21 points from 20 games should have no business thinking about playoff possibilities. They are lucky that there isn’t a lower league to which they can be relegated.

Sporting Director Georg Heitz was assigned a very tough task when he took the reins in December 2019. It was a very short runway to hire a new coach and assemble a competitive roster. Heitz was hired for his ability to mine talent from under-the-radar players. He brought in three Designated Players: striker Robert Beric, holding midfielder Gaston Gimenez, and winger Ignacio Aliseda. Beric and Gimenez have been significant contributors to the Fire’s on-field success. It took some time for Aliseda to cement his role as a starter in the Chicago lineup, and he has shown more promise than productivity. Heitz also signed fullback Boris Sekulic and winger/fullback Miguel Navarro. Sekulic is a solid defender and everyday starter, while Navarro has had his ups and downs. Midfielder Alvaro Medran (signed by the Fire in October 2019) preceded Heitz and has been a crafty, two-way playmaker slotted alongside Gimenez.

Beric, Gimenez, Aliseda, Medran and Sekulic provide a decent enough core around which a good team can be built. Holdovers Djordje Mihailovic, Francisco Calvo and Jonathan Bornstein are good MLS talents and rookie Mauricio Pineda has slotted into his role at centerback with very few hiccups. This is the good news.

The real problems for the Fire are evident as one looks farther down the roster. The dropoff in quality from the regular starters is precipitous and is the main reason why this team is trying to tread water as they straddle the playoff line. The quality of these players is a mixture of MLS journeymen, unproven Homegrown Players, and players who are merely taking up space.

The Fire need a stud goalkeeper
The Fire began the season with Kenneth Kronholm as the undisputed starting goalkeeper. When he suffered a season-ending knee injury, the job was passed along to Bobby Shuttleworth. Kronholm played in the lower levels of German soccer for many years and represented the last attempt by former Fire coach Veljko Paunovic to find a reliable starter. Playing behind a rock-solid back four, Kronholm might be an adequate goalie. Shuttleworth is a veteran of MLS and has performed reasonably well, but he is not the long-term solution as the starter. Paunovic jettisoned Sean Johnson after the 2016 season and none of Johnson’s replacements (except possibly David Ousted) have been better options.

There are holes in the Fire’s midfield
As currently set up, the Fire employ a five-man midfield. Gimenez, Medran and Aliseda are locked in as starters, After some early struggles to get on the same page as coach Raphael Wicky, Mihailovic has brought a decent level of quality. But what the Fire really need is a player like Michael de Leeuw or Dax McCarty. There simply may not have been enough time for Heitz  to find the right player for this role.

This leaves one midfield slot open for Fabian Herbers, Przemyslaw Frankowski, or CJ Sapong to fill and neither Herbers nor Sapong represent starter-level quality. Herbers has a very good work ethic and gives full effort, but he falls short when his brain sends messages to his feet regarding skills he cannot possibly execute. Herbers is best suited for a complementary role, yet, Wicky has put his name in the starting lineup 16 times this season. Curiously, the club has already extended his contract.

Sapong is listed as a forward for the Fire, but has logged most of his minutes as a winger this season. As long Wicky deploys Beric as the Fire’s lone striker, midfield will be Sapong’s only chance to contribute. And given that he scored more than 10 goals in a season just twice in a career spanning 276 matches, Sapong is more of a supporting player than he is a scorer.

Frankowski is the best player of the three from a technical standpoint and has started 13 times in 2020. With just 1 goal and 0 assists, his claim to be in the first XI every week is on shaky ground.

Let’s hope Robert Beric stays healthy
Beric has given a good account of himself after recovering from a scoring drought early in the campaign. He is the Fire’s only consistent scorer and is tied for third in the race for the Golden Boot award. Beric is probably the closest thing to an indispensable player on this team. There is no good replacement for Beric should he get injured. Elliot Collier is certainly not an option, given his lack of technical skill. He spent all of 2019 on loan to Memphis in USL and scored a meager 6 goals. Striker is a position where Heitz must find more talent.

Can we let the kids play?
The answer appears to be no, for the most part. Wicky routinely names several Homegrown Players to his gameday roster, but only two have even gotten crumbs of playing time. As long as playoff aspirations remain alive and as long as Wicky adheres to the longstanding principle that playing time is earned, there will be few chances for teenagers to feature for the Fire. The proposed MLS reserve league cannot arrive fast enough to give these youngsters meaningful minutes.

What does it all mean?
This Fire team is simply not good enough. Talking about playoff possibilities and checking the scores of other games seems utterly pointless for a team that has won just five times in 20 matches (and zero wins on the road). Owner Joe Mansueto anticipated a full Soldier Field last March 21 when the Fire planned to reintroduce themselves to Chicago’s soccer fans. The pandemic obviously scotched those plans, but maybe it’s just as well that the Fire played in an empty stadium in 2020, so that nobody had to watch a team whose puzzle box was several pieces short of completing the picture.

Photo: Bill Streicher, USA TODAY