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The Chicago Fire’s season has been anything but smooth and consistent. Through 18 games, the Fire have more losses than wins (7-6), but are still above the playoff line in sixth place.
On the whole, all that we’ve learned is that the team isn’t as good as last year’s 55-point haul, but it’s also not bad enough to be out of the playoff race midway through the year. With that in mind, here are the three biggest surprises for this year’s Fire.
Katai surpasses expectations
Aleksandar Katai was brought in as a replacement for David Accam.
Accam was very productive in his final season with the Fire, tallying 14 goals and eight assists in 2017 before being traded to the Philadelphia Union during the offseason.
Katai is a different type of winger than Accam, but he too managed to be productive. After a rocky start, which saw him get benched by coach Veljko Paunović, he seemingly settled in with his new team. He now has either a goal or an assist in each of his last eight MLS matches (six goals, three assists). His eight total goals and three assists give him the most goals plus assists on the team.
“It’s easy for everyone to see that Katai is one of our more dangerous players in the attack, if not our most dangerous player in the attack,” midfielder Dax McCarty told MLSsoccer.com.
The next question is if he will stay with the Fire. Katai’s loan expires at the end of July and his parent club, Deportivo Alaves, has him under contract for another La Liga season. General manager Nelson Rodriguez will have to make a decision about Katai very soon.
If the price is deemed too high, the question then becomes how will the Fire replace that production?
Brandon Vincent is a centerback now?
This isn’t necessarily the most significant development of the Fire’s season in the short-term, but it is definitely the most surprising. Vincent played purely left back in his first two seasons with the Fire. Lately, he has been playing at centerback.
Vincent’s first taste of the position came during the Fire’s preseason when centerbacks Grant Lillard and Jonathan Campbell were both out injured. Christian Dean got the first crack to start at the position as a result, but Vincent played there because of the need for extra bodies in the preseason.
“We actually found out that Brandon can play a very good role in center back because we were pushed to make that decision and he was pushed to play that role,” Paunović said on Feb. 27. “That was a great opportunity for us to see if that can happen.”
Vincent hasn’t been especially good or bad yet, but his move is more a bad sign for Dean, Campbell and Lillard. Dean played his way out of the lineup with some key mistakes early on. Campbell and Lillard have split time since coming back from injury, and apparently neither have impressed Paunović.
At 25, Dean is the oldest of the trio. Campbell is 24 and Lillard, a homegrown rookie, is 22. Entering the season, the thought was that one of those three would emerge to take the spot of the departed Joao Meira. Instead, Vincent has been used.
The upside is that Jorge Corrales has been useful at left back, which likely also played into Paunović’s willingness to move Vincent centrally. Even if Vincent proves serviceable in the short-term, it doesn’t look like a long-term solution.
Improved road performance keeping season afloat
The Fire were not known for getting results on the road in recent years. After combining for three road wins from 2014-2016, the Fire did improve away from Toyota Park with a 4-9-4 record in 2017.
This season, the relative road success has continued with two wins and three draws in eight matches away from home. Those nine points in eight matches tie for the eighth-most road points per game in the league.
The road record is nothing spectacular, but it has kept the Fire in the playoff race considering the team has a league-worst four home defeats.
Can it last? Who knows, but the Fire will need to sustain some level of road success to make up for the lost ground at home.