The Chicago Fire are hoping to be MLS Cup contenders this season, and their current run of games will give a good idea of where they stand in that pursuit.
Following Wednesday night’s 1-1 home draw with 2nd-placed Inter Miami, their attention now shifts to Sunday’s battle with the New England Revolution, who just passed the Fire for 3rd place. Less than a week later, they’ll travel to Nashville to face the runaway Eastern Conference leader.
The performance and result against Miami suggested that the Fire’s placement near the top of the table is no fluke, and that they are capable of going toe-to-toe with the league’s top teams. So at what point can the Men in Red consider themselves to be among the elite sides of MLS?
“We’re extremely close,” goalkeeper Chris Brady told MIR97 Media after his six saves earned him man of the match honors. “It’s going to take just one performance against the top team. Thankfully, these next four or five games are against the top opponents.”
“All it’s going to take is one game, one dominant performance for us to really start to believe that we are one of the best teams in this league, and we can show that on a week in, week out basis, but we’re right there.”
Although Miami have had a downturn in form in the last few weeks (winning just one of their last eight), the reigning MLS Cup and Shield winners are still one of the league's most dangerous teams. In addition to building their team around the greatest player of all time, Lionel Messi, they boast stars like Casemiro, Rodrigo de Paul, and Luis Suárez in positions most other MLS teams could only dream of.
On Wednesday, the Fire started brightly, dominating the early phases in front of a club-record 63,094 spectators at Soldier Field. Their reward came in the 10th minute when Designated Player forward Robert Lewandowski knocked in the opening goal, though the Fire’s dominance tailed off after taking the lead.
Legendary former Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Brazil midfielder Casemiro tied the game from a corner assisted by Messi right at the beginning of the second half, and while the Fire did get back into the game in the final 30 minutes, it’s impossible to deny that a 1-1 draw was the correct result for the game.
“What we learned is that we can be a top team in this league,” defender Andrew Gutman, who assisted Lewandowski’s goal, said postgame. “We played well enough against Miami in the second half at least to get a result out of here. For us, it’s just the belief that we think we should be as high up on the table as we can be. Now we got to show it in the next few weeks.”
“We need wins,” defender Jack Elliott added. “Draws and being unbeaten is one thing, but we need wins in this league. Three points is better than one at the end of the day, and that’s what we need to focus on. I think there’s an air of frustration. Regardless of being unbeaten, it doesn’t feel great to just keep drawing games.”
One match alone isn’t enough of a sample size to determine where the Fire truly stand right now, regardless of how well they played for large spells against Messi’s team. Sunday’s test against Marko Mitrović’s well-organized and on-the-rise Revolution is a 3-vs.-4 matchup and unequivocally a six-pointer, and when combined with the following weekend’s test against B.J. Callaghan’s league-leading Nashville, there will be a much clearer picture of where the East’s undisputed top four really stand.
Things won’t ease up in the next six weeks for Gregg Berhalter’s team: after New England and Nashville, they must then face 5th-placed Charlotte and West-leading Vancouver, and will head into October facing currently red-hot Philadelphia and New England. As players round into the maximal level and new arrivals – specifically center back Andreas Hanche-Olsen and midfielder Anzor Mekvabishvili – join the team, things are only going to get better.
By the end of this difficult stretch, the Fire’s MLS Cup credentials will either be solidified or hampered heading into the playoffs. While reaching the postseason for the second consecutive season is now all but a statistical certainty (99.86% chance, per my model), what their external expectations will be when they get there is still to be determined.
“To me, it’s not enough of a message,” Berhalter said of the Miami draw. “If we would have won, I think it would be a little bit different. But we still have work to do, and you can see it. We need to get better because we weren’t in a position to dictate the game for long enough. We’re hanging on, but we don’t want to be in that position. They have a good team. I don’t want to take anything away from their team, but we can do a better job.”
