What will it take for the Chicago Fire to make the MLS playoffs?

After Saturday night’s 1-0 win over D.C. United at Soldier Field, Fire head coach Ezra Hendrickson again hit on his key talking points: the team’s been playing well lately, even though they went one day shy of three months between victories. And, if they can just play like this going forward, they still have a chance to dig themselves out of this hole and make the playoffs.

“I said to them remember this feeling, remember how good it feels to walk off a pitch when you’ve played well knowing that you didn’t give the game away or you didn’t lose the game,” Hendrickson said. “There were a lot of times there were games that we tied like Red Bull, for instance, that we should have won. There are games that we lost that we probably should have tied, let’s say Cincinnati for instance. And hopefully we could stop that and we can change the narrative about this team, that there is a team that can close out games.”

One one hand, he’s right. The team has shown glimpses of quality soccer, on the attack, in midfield, and on defense. But those glimpses have been coupled with poor finishing, stupid fouls, and defensive mishaps. Of the Fire’s three wins this season, two have come over fellow bottom dweller D.C. United, and the other was against one of the Western Conference’s weakest sides, Sporting Kansas City. On paper this team is very good, and they do good things, but realistically they’re nowhere near a playoff team at this point.

But, this is Major League Soccer. Bad teams can go on a quick tear and change their fortunes. It happens–never to the Fire, mind you–but it does happen. So what would it take to sneak into the playoffs? Let’s take a look:

Currently, expansion side Charlotte FC sits in the seventh and final spot in the East, with 20 points earned in 16 games. That puts Charlotte on pace to finish with 42.5 points. It took 48 points to make the postseason last year, so let’s split the difference and say it will take 45 this season.

Chicago is on 14 points through 15 games played, giving the Fire 19 more games to find 31 points. That would look something like this: eight wins (24 points), seven draws (7 points), and four losses.

The Fire’s next five games feature four pretty bad opponents: Houston (10th in West), Philadelphia (3rd in East), Francisco Calvo’s San Jose Earthquakes (14th in West), the Columbus Crew (11th in East), and Toronto FC (12th in East). If the Fire can somehow string together a few results and come away with 10 points from the next five matches, they’d make up enough ground the playoffs might start to seem possible.

Against D.C., the Fire’s back line of Jonathan Bornstein, Rafael Czichos, Wyatt Omsberg, and Boris Sekulic was so strong that Gaga Slonina didn’t have to make a single save. Gastón Giménez actually looked like a Designated Player in midfield, winning balls and spraying brilliant passes. And the attackers, although they only scored one goal, were creating plenty of chances. Brian Gutierrez was strong filling in for Xherdan Shaqiri, Chris Mueller was fantastic out wide and centrally later in the game, and Fabian Herbers delivered his usual workhorse performance off the bench, coming away with his first goal since 2020 (we’re not saying it was because of the piece we wrote about Herbers at CHGO before the match, but we’re also not not saying that).

Fabi for the lead 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/MHrxlsGKpV

— Chicago Fire FC (@ChicagoFire) June 19, 2022

Sure, it’s just one complete performance, and the Fire will need a lot more than this before they can even start thinking about the playoffs. But, it was something. Finally.

“Yeah, I think we have to build on it, I think we have to use that momentum going forward,” Bornstein said after the match. “We have another good week of preparation before the game in Houston. We go on the road, so for us, we have to win every single game that we have in front of us to get ourselves back in the race for playoffs and so I think everyone is prepared for that.”

Injury Updates

Hendrickson said they’re hoping Shaqiri and his hamstring will be ready to go for Houston, but they’re continuing to be careful and not push things. Jairo Torres missed yet another match with a lingering hip issue that seemed to start after he left Atlas to join the Fire, and there’s no new word on how he’s doing, other than that he’s “day-to-day”. And Hendrickson didn’t have an update yet on Omsberg, who appeared to suffer a foot injury in second half stoppage time against D.C., after turning in a brilliant performance. We should learn more on all the injured players later this week before the team leaves for Houston.