Chicago Fire midweek training: 3 takeaways from Week 2
After barely scraping out a draw against Orlando City, the Chicago Fire have a lot to work to do. Here are three takeaways from Week 2 for the Fire.
Hello and welcome again to the Chicago Fire’s midweek training, where I try to pick apart what the Fire should be working on going into the next game. With Week 2 in the books, the Fire are still absolutely confusing to me. In a game that they should’ve won against Orlando City, they found themselves trying to catch up for most of the second half and only just scraped out a draw against a team they should be much better than.
On the other hand, the attack looked great in the build-up and the defense held Orlando fairly quiet for the entire match. I’ve said many times that the Fire, in the way that they are now, will either be MLS Cup contenders or Wooden Spoon contenders this season, and they’ve certainly held onto the idea that they can be both at the same time.
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With that in mind, here are three Chicago Fire takeaways from Week 2, with a particular focus on Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Orlando City.
3. Hot start, no finish
Every single attack the Chicago Fire put together seems to be a sort of metaphor for their entire play on a smaller scale: The initial build-up is great, openings are created, but there never seems to be an end product. Once again, on Saturday, it was finishing that was the problem.
Even without Przemyslaw Frankowski starting, there were still great moments of passing between Djordje Mihailovic, Aleksander Katai, CJ Sapong, Nemanja Nikolic, and Bastian Schweinsteiger. They did exactly what fans have been suggesting, which is making sure that all possession and play stays in the opponent’s half, that their goal shouldn’t be to pull the defense apart but to find ways to cut through. Then the final pass is made and it’s just not quite rght.
A major part of the attack for the past two seasons has been Nemanja Nikolic who, before last season, was the Golden Boot winner in all of MLS. Due to his wife having a kid only a day or so before, he was unable to appear in the season opener against the LA Galaxy. Understandable. Now returning to the team, he didn’t exactly appear quite himself. Nikolic is a pure technical striker, someone who finishes with finesse in tough situations. There were two very specific chances that he was given very early in the game that he did not complete. The second one was a bit of a tough shot that went wide, but the first seemed to just be a complete and total error on his part where he received a perfect pass from Mihailovic and simply fell over himself. Far from ideal.
Nikolic isn’t the only player struggling to find the net, though. There were a few other players this game that missed absolutely amazing chances. Right now, the Fire have all of the set-up, all of the personnel, just none of the payoff. In the words of Elaine Benes, ‘It’s like a big budget movie with a story that goes nowhere.’