Chicago Fire vs Toronto FC: Moral Victories, Real Losses

The Chicago Fire took 31 shots, 14 of them on target, in their game at home against Toronto FC. They did that and lost 2-1 at the end of the day. There’s a lot to unpack there, so before we do, let’s look at the actual run of play.

Toronto FC got off to a quick start in the 2nd minute when the Chicago Fire defense shifted too far over into the corner, leaving Tsubasa Endoh almost completely open at the top of the box. One touch was enough for him to blow past a recovering Jonathan Bornstein and allow Yeferson Soteldo to finish it for the early lead. This lead was then threatened at every turn. Ignacio Aliseda got an open look in the 10th minute, but Alex Bono reacted in time to close the distance. Frankowski would send a shot over the bar in the 11th minute and Aliseda once again got a chance in the 12th minute, but that would go over as well. Another flurry of chances came in the 31st and 33rd minutes, where Bono once again closed the distance on a wide open Aliseda and Robert Beric failed to get a good strike on a quick cross to him.

Most of the second half was fairly quiet, with the Chicago Fire continuing to dominate the chances, the peak of which coming in the 65th minute when Chinonso Offor looked to sneak a lobbed header in behind Bono, only to be stopped right in front of the crossbar. Things got worse in the 76th minute when once again, a defensive shift led to a wide open Nick De Leon taking his chance for the second goal of the game. But a minute later a very confusing series of bounces in the box finally allowed the Fire to get past Bono on an Alvaro Medran half-volley. Chinonso Offor tried to get the equalizer in the 82nd with a close header in behind the defense, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to get past Bono. The game would end 2-1 for Toronto.

Here are three things to consider from this one:

Out-Gunned and Out-Manned

So, back to what I said in the beginning. The Chicago Fire took 31 total shots. 14 of them were on target. 5 of those shots on target came just from Ignacio Aliseda. In fact, Aliseda’s xG alone was 1.1. Toronto FC’s xG on this game was 0.9, which was actually Chinonso Offor’s individual xG after being subbed on in the 58th minute. The Fire’s total xG this game was 3.7. So how did the Fire take what should’ve been a 4-1 victory and drop to a 1-2 loss?

It comes down to two things. First, Alex Bono just had an amazing and fairly lucky game. Most of the best chances for the Fire weren’t exactly fully available because Bono was right on top of the ball. His reactions were excellent and it’s hard to get anything done when up against such a hot goalkeeper. And the second thing was the defense. Since this is the numbers portion of the article, I should mention that while Toronto’s xG was 0.9, Shuttleworth’s PSxG was 1.5. That difference of 0.6 comes from the amount of difficulty added onto the goalkeeper based on metrics after the shot. Basically, the defense allowed players to be in good enough position to raise their chances of scoring even higher than the normal xG calculations.

Bad Shift

Recently I’ve heard about some conversations in Major League Baseball about banning defensive shifts. I don’t know much about baseball, but I would like to see that mindset applied to the Chicago Fire’s defense, whose complete inability to maintain concentration on their positioning was the main reason why those two goals were scored.

Obviously, there’s difficulty in defending a counter-attack. But in both cases, it wasn’t like the counterattack fully caught the defense off-guard. In both plays, you can see that the entire defense is there and has the opportunity to get into position. Instead, the entire line shifts over to the side the ball is on, something that destroys any sort of defensive integrity. Maybe it’s forgivable in the first goal, where there should’ve been a left wing back covering the area Jonathan Bornstein was covering before he ran to recover against Tsubasa Endoh. There was a bad turnover in the corner, so two of the three centerbacks had gone over to help. But in the second goal, Jhon Espinoza seemed to just completely forgot that he was playing at left back, leaving Nick De Leon wide open There doesn’t need to be three guys covering one attacker, especially when there’s another attacker being left unmarked on that play.

A Zero-Point Win

There are two ways to look at this game. First, a loss is a loss. And when you dominated a game only to lose to a team that has spent almost the entire season holding up the standings, there’s something that went horribly wrong. High shot counts and high xG with just a single goal tallied is a sign of poor finishing. And the defensive showing was so bad that it negated any possibly attacking benefits to the point that the formation actually shifted back into a four-man back-line in the second half. The first train of thought is that this was a bad game because the team doesn’t have enough quality.

But there is a more optimistic way to look at this one. Earlier in the season, the Chicago Fire were barely able to take any shots, their passing was terrible, and it showed in their performances. But in this one, the Fire kept pressing. They made the opposing goalkeeper work and they did well on other sides of the game. The team completed over 400 passes with a completion percentage of 82%, better than any passing percentage we’ve seen at Soldier Field in a long time. And while there’s issues with defensive positioning, players like Miguel Navarro and Mauricio Pineda have shown a lot of skill in recovering and neutralizing the threat.

This was not a win. It was not the three points against a bad team that the Fire needed. It wasn’t even one point. But there was a lot more good in this game than in Wednesday’s draw with DC United.