For the first time this season, the Chicago Fire are set to play their fifth straight match without some kind of interruption.
That wouldn’t be worth noting under normal circumstances, but that regularity also is part of the problem faced by the Fire, who are trying to find a balance between building consistency while needing to rotate their squad as games pile up.
Sunday’s home match against the New England Revolution will be the fifth game in 18 days for the Fire (2-5-2, 8 points), who are looking to string back-to-back positive results for only the second time this season.
Since restarting Major League Soccer action Aug. 20, the Fire have been inconsistent: A 3-0 road loss to the Columbus Crew, a 3-0 win against FC Cincinnati at Soldier Field, a 3-1 road loss to New York City FC and a scoreless draw Wednesday night against Cincinnati in which the Fire struggled to get into the match.
During that stretch, Fire coach Raphael Wicky has relied on a core group of players in an attempt to build cohesion, largely opting against squad rotation outside of injury.
Meanwhile, Robert Beric, the Fire’s only available out-and-out striker, hasn’t scored in the last six games.
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“We tried to build the team, we tried to find some consistency,” Wicky said during a video conference after Wednesday’s match. “We started with the same team besides (goalkeeper) Bobby (Shuttleworth) that played in New York. I felt some guys had a little bit of heavy legs, which is normal after all these games.”
Those heavy legs against Cincinnati were evident from the start.
The Fire were slow to get going and got an early wakeup call when Shuttleworth was forced to make a point-blank save in the first minute.
“We switched off a bit and in the first couple minutes that’s not something that can happen,” Shuttleworth said. “We’ll have to go over that and make sure it’s corrected for the next game.”
Needing to correct preventable mistakes has been a recurring theme for the Fire.
Against the Crew, winger Przemyslaw Frankowski failed to track a run into the box, enabling Derrick Etienne to open the scoring. Likewise against NYCFC, Anton Tinnerholm was left unmarked on the left side of the Fire’s defense, easily finishing just minutes into the second half.
Midfielder Alvaro Medran, who has started all nine of the Fire’s matches this season, attributed the mistakes to concentration errors.
“It’s just moments where we lack a little bit of concentration and that’s something we can fix,” he said Tuesday through a team interpreter. “We can go back and work together and just be more focused and concentrated and that’s how we can go ahead and resolve that.”
What makes the juggling act tricky for the Fire is the combination of a crammed schedule, same-day travel for road games and the relative newness of the team.
Despite the squad largely being together since March, the various stoppages of play have meant the Fire — who went through an extensive but rushed squad overhaul in the offseason that included three new designated players — have played just nine matches together, further complicated by this being Wicky’s first season with the team.
Building cohesion during a stop-start season has been a slow process, but midfielder Gaston Gimenez said he thinks the Fire might be ready to put things together.
“We are feeling more comfortable together,” he said Wednesday through a team interpreter. “We are starting to understand each other better. We are finding ways to play together more cohesively. We are starting to understand better what the coach is asking of us.
“Each time we’re playing a little bit better, but there are things that we can adjust, that we can correct. Little by little, we’re going to get there.”
Should Wicky opt to rotate against the Revolution (2-2-5, 11 points) on Sunday, chances are he might look to Djordje Mihailovic or Elliot Collier, who came off the bench in the second half against Cincinnati and created a handful of chances, including on Ignacio Aliseda’s disallowed goal for a hand ball in the build-up.
That energy boost was needed, said Gimenez, who has played the full 90 minutes in every match of this stretch.
“We needed that freshness,” he said. “Especially with so many games back-to-back every three days, it’s important that our subs come in and bring in that freshness and that they come in ready to play, and (on Wednesday) they certainly showed that they are ready to play. That’s what we need, everyone coming in and demonstrating that they are ready — we are all ready, we are all competitive — and coming in and bringing in that energy.”