The Fire won again – this time in MLS play – bringing them up to third in MLS’s Eastern Conference. Readers of The Hot Line, our free weekly newsletter, would know that our model has the Fire projected to finish third after the win against Charlotte, meaning they’re just back to where they’re supposed to be.
Here’s what we learned from the Fire’s 100th victory ever at Soldier Field.
Djé D’Avilla is playing with confidence
Amongst the Fire’s first team squad, none have shown a greater distance between their floor and their ceiling than Djé D’Avilla.
When he’s having a good game, he is good: High level MLS starter, sell him to somewhere in Europe for a prince’s ransom-level good. When he isn’t….. You wonder if the scouting department phoned it in before the team signed him.
In 2025, he started out looking lost, and then had one of the fastest development arcs I’ve seen. By the end of the year, the thought was, “if he takes another step forward, he could be MLS All-Star Level (that is, if d-mids got All-Star nods).”
In 2026, for the most part, he has not taken that step forward. He had some fine games, and some that were…. short of that, but overall it felt like his development had stalled out.
A low point came a few weeks ago, in the Fire’s loss to New York City FC. Playing as part of a two man midfield on the small pitch at Yankee Stadium, D’Avilla was caught out several times and the team suffered as a result. The loss was not on him, but man, he did not help the squad with its defensive gaps.
Since then, though, it’s been an upwards trajectory, and on Sunday night, it looked like he actually took that next step forward. Scoring a goal and adding an assist, D’Avilla was the Fire’s best player on the night.
Not only was he involved in both goals, but he had the most defensive contributions of anyone on the pitch with nine, and won 100% of the duels he was involved in. Here’s Berhalter on the guy who put on a pretty good prime Sergio Busquets impression against Portland: “was
immense today and played a very good game. Both sides of the ball, he was effective, he got the goal, and he made some other really nice offensive plays. But then his effort defensively – good positioning, good tackling. A couple of last ditch tackles at the end, so in the end, really, really happy for D’Avilla.”
What changed? Two things.
First, the Fire switched back to a three man midfield, which enabled D’Avilla to get back to the job that he’s best at. D’Avilla knows as much, saying “When we are three, my defensive positioning is better and I feel good… when it’s three, since I’m a [no.] six [defensive midfielder], it makes me very happy to play with three.”
The second thing? His confidence. Part of that comes from coaching, according to D’Avilla, who said ““Gregg also helped me with that, because always he is telling me, ‘Hey, you are the best. You can do more and more every day.’ And I mean, it gave me a lot of confidence,” later saying that “the first three months of the year were not too easy for me,” and that Berhalter and the coaching staff were working with him to improve his game. “He’s giving me a lot of credit,” D’Avilla said of his coach, “that I need to give back also, what he’s doing with me.”
And what led to the goal? Before the game, D’Avilla said, “I was talking with my girlfriend, and she asked me to score one goal for her. This goal is for her today, and I'm happy.”
We haven’t talked enough about Maren
The assist on D’Avilla’s goal went to Maren Haile-Selassie. Grabbing the rebound after Lewandowski’s shot was blocked, rather than turn into an oncoming Portland defender, Haile-Selassie looked upfield and saw D’Avilla approaching with a clear look on net and elected to send it to him.
The pass was simple, the heads-up play that led to it? Less so.
The assist was the 27th for the Swiss attacker since coming to MLS, putting him in the eighth spot on the Fire’s all-time list, and his 44 goal contributions put him at 13th all time for the Fire.
He’s done it all somewhat under the radar. Ahead of the season, Joe Lowery told John and me on The Bonfire that Haile-Selassie was “the best backup winger in MLS.” Lowery meant it as a compliment – he’s not the kind of guy to do otherwise – but you could also easily read that as a back-handed compliment (and he’s actually started in more than half of his MLS appearances).
One of the things that has made Maren not get the kind of notoriety that you’d think a guy that’s in the top 10 list for assists and nearing it for goal contributions would get is his versatility. Technical, smart, speedy but not outright fast, and capable with both feet, Haile-Selassie is good at many things. He isn’t great at any one thing.
Because of that, Haile-Selassie is a great bench option: You can bring him on and he can plug basically any hole the team has.
That versatility was on display against Portland, where Haile-Selassie started on the left and wound up on the right after Philip Zinckernagel was subbed off.
Maren’s been good for the Fire, and even factoring the international slot, he’s been a good value cap-wise since coming over. He’s now dead-center in the prime of his career at 27, and in the final year of his deal in Chicago.
Will he get a new deal to keep him around?
Lewy didn’t play well. He might not have to.
Robert Lewandowski started for the Fire and had a mostly forgettable hour on the pitch before being subbed off.
He was involved in the Fire’s second goal, taking a shot that Portland managed to block. Maren Haile-Selassie pounced on the rebound, sent it to Djé D’Avilla just outside the box, who then sent it into the back of the net.
It was a great example of why coaches (and statistical models!) say to shoot more: Because you don’t know what’s going to happen but there’s a decent chance it’ll be something good.
What it was not a great example of, however, was why the Fire brought in Lewandowski as the team’s biggest-ever signing, by both name, stature and salary
Overall, including the blocked effort, Lewandowski had three touches in the opposition box, three shots for a total 0.22 xG, and one shot on target. You could try putting a positive spin on that – when he gets a touch in the box, it often results in a shot – but he also, notably, failed to connect with service on a handful of occasions.
Look: It was not a great outing, and it comes on the heels of three games in the Leagues Cup, where, despite scoring a goal, Lewandowski didn’t exactly stand out.
Media in Poland are openly worried about the best player their country has produced, with some asking if he’s out of form, and others blaming the standard around him.
Still, it might not really matter: The Fire winning, including against Cruz Azul, one of the best opponents that the Fire have faced in recent years, even without Lewandowski scoring goals as part of the process.
Here’s the most impressive number associated with Lewandowski over the stretch ending in Sunday’s victory over Portland and starting with the win over Santos Laguna the Sunday prior: 218.
That is the number of minutes that the 37-year-old striker played over that eight-day span, including a 90 minute effort against Santos Laguna that was capped by his only goal over that stretch.
Lewandowski did not have the advantage of a preseason, and both he and the Fire are still getting acclimated with each other. Most recently, that’s involved having him used as more of an option in build up.
One thing that has changed from his time in Spain and Germany: The parity of MLS. The Fire are a very good team in the league this year, and trying to make a case for pushing up into the elite category alongside Miami, Nashville and Vancouver, but the distance from the Fire – or any of those teams – to the middle and even bottom of the table is much, much smaller than it has been anywhere else that Lewandowski has played. That means comparatively less service and smaller margins. It does not mean that the Fire won’t find a way to make Lewandowski very productive.
Berhalter has been able to maximize the production of forwards throughout his time as a coach, and I do not think Robert Lewandowski, one of the most prolific scorers in history, will prove to be the exception to that.
