Chicago Fire vs Columbus Crew: Week 8 Preview

After a couple of weeks to recover and regroup, the Chicago Fire are now set for a fairly congested schedule in the near future. This stretch of three games in one week starts on Saturday with their final visit to Crew Stadium in Columbus. I’ll get into that in a bit, but first let’s look at who will be traveling there.

There have been encouraging reports surrounding Stanislav Ivanov’s recovery from his preseason injury, but he is still a long way off from his return. Less encouraging things can be said about Kenneth Kronholm, who has yet to practice with the first team since his injury around this time last year. Also missing are Przemyslaw Frankowski and Gaston Gimenez, who are currently with their respective national teams at their summer tournaments.

(Oh, and also in the news was former Chicago Fire defender Jim Curtin, who signed a contract extension with the Philadelphia Union this week).

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As for Columbus, it’s still expected for Luis Diaz, Milton Valenzuela, and Perry Kitchen to be out. Kevin Molino and Waylon Francis are also coming off of injuries and while Columbus coach Caleb Porter seems hopefully they could see minutes, it’s not expected. And while they don’t appear to have any more games, Eloy Room and Derrick Etienne Jr have been with their national teams for CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying, so they may be on some minutes control.

Here are three things to look out for in this game.

All Quiet on the Front

Despite some rumbling expectations of something happening with the Chicago Fire’s roster or management, nothing actually happened over the two week break. The Fire have gotten off to what is historically their worst start of all-time and last season wasn’t much better when it came to results. While the mathematical minds of statisticians have produced metrics that claim that the club is competitive on paper, we have yet to see this in practice.

Something to keep an eye on is the amount of green cards the squad has been getting. Recently it was announced that Robert Beric and Luka Stojanovic both got their US Green Cards, freeing up those international slots. They join Przemyslaw Frankowski, who got his earlier in the year. One of the biggest questions surrounding Georg Heitz’s roster selection was a potential misuse of international slots, but now with more freedom, we could see another player come in this summer window. It may not be likely and there are no active rumors at the moment, but it is possible.

Shaking it Off

While the Chicago Fire may have had the rough start many would expect out of them, the Columbus Crew were expected to dominate. Instead, the team struggled to get up to its feet early in the season, mostly due to CONCACAF Champions League matches on top of their normal preseason. The team has also suffered a lot of injuries, like the one to Kevin Molino, and only scored in one of their first five games. That was also their only win in their first five.

But since then, the Champions League has ended and Columbus appears to be getting back on track, with steady 2-1 wins over NYCFC and Toronto FC. With Kevin Molino set to return soon and other injured players being upgraded to day-to-day, the Crew are ready to surge back against a struggling Chicago Fire side.

Firehouse East

Let’s actually talk about that struggling Chicago Fire side and their relationship with the Columbus Crew and the venue this game will be played in: Historic Crew Stadium. The Fire may be terrible on the road now, but back in the early years of the club, they made an absolute mess of Columbus every time they’d visit. In fact, the supporters’ trip to “Firehouse East” was always the biggest of the year. From their first game there in 1999 up until 2009, which is widely regarded as the last good Fire season, Chicago picked up 8 wins and 6 draws out of 18 regular season games. It took until 2014 for Columbus to finally overtake the Fire in this specific matchup.

Things are much different now, with the Fire’s failures on the road on full display over the past decade. The Fire have not won since 2013 and lost 9 of the last 14 meetings. Much like in general in Major League Soccer, the days of the Fire’s dominance are long gone. But with this being the final game in Crew Stadium, a location that spelled an easy Chicago win for the longest time, it would be nice to see the club send off their home away from home in style.

Projected XI

Chicago Fire (4-3-3): Bobby Shuttleworth; Miguel Navarro, Francisco Calvo, Wyatt Omsberg, Boris Sekulic; Alvaro Medran, Luka Stojanovic, Mauricio Pineda; Ignacio Aliseda, Robert Beric, Brian Gutierrez

Columbus Crew (4-2-3-1): Eloy Room; Saad Abdul-Salaam, Josh Williams, Jonathan Mensah, Harrison Afful; Darlington Nagbe, Liam Fraser; Pedro Santos, Lucas Zelarayan, Derrick Etienne Jr; Gyasi Zardes

How To Watch

Saturday, June 19th, 6:30PM CDT; At Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, OH, on WGN and online on the Chicago Fire website

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