{"id":45031,"date":"2017-04-13T23:12:19","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T03:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=45031"},"modified":"2017-04-13T23:12:19","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T03:12:19","slug":"the-warm-up-chivne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=45031","title":{"rendered":"The Warm Up: #CHIvNE"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photo credit: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz<\/p><\/div>\n

Who: Revolution (2-2-1, 7 points) vs. Chicago Fire (2-1-2, 8 points)
\nWhat: Week 7 of the MLS regular season
\nWhere: Toyota Park, Chicago, Illinois
\nWhen: Saturday, April 15 at 5:00pm ET
\nWatch: CSN New England, MLS Live, Direct Kick
\nWhistle: Ted Unkel \u2013 Head Referee; Adam Wienckowski\/Eduardo Mariscal \u2013 Assistant Referees; Fotis Bazakos \u2013 4th Referee.<\/p>\n

Scouting the Opposition:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013The Chicago Fire are resurging from a pitiful 2016 campaign in which they finished deasd\u00a0last in the MLS. After stumbling through a 7-17-10 record in 2016, Chicago currently sits in fourth place in the Eastern Conference with a 2-1-2 record, including an unbeaten 2-0-1 record at home.<\/p>\n

-Chicago has been busy bringing in new talent, including revamped their entire midfield, adding Dax McCarty and Juninho in the offseason, and signing designated player Bastian Schweinsteiger last month. They also added Hungarian striker Nemanja Nikolic, who scored 48 goals in 64 appearances for Legia Warsaw from 2015-2017 and has two goals in five games with the Fire this year.<\/p>\n

-Since adding Schweinsteiger to the lineup, Chicago has played three forwards in both games. Against Montreal, they played a 4-3-3, which resulted in a 2-2 draw. Chicago played a 3-4-3 in a 1-0 win over Columbus. Anticipate Michael de Leeuw and David Accam playing out wide while Nikolic plays in the center as the target forward.<\/p>\n

-Juninho was not available for Chicago\u2019s last match against Columbus, which prompted the Fire to put Brandon Vincent and Michael Harrington, who are typically the team\u2019s fullbacks, to play left and right midfield, respectively. With Juninho expected to play Saturday, Chicago probably will play the 4-3-3 formation they started with against Montreal.<\/p>\n

-Along the back line, Vincent and Harrington are likely to start as the team\u2019s fullbacks, while the Fire will likely start a centerback pairing with two of Joao Meira, Johan Kappelhof, and\/or Jonathan Campbell. All five defenders are returning from the 2016 squad, which conceded 58 goals during the MLS season.<\/p>\n

-Lee Nguyen on Chicago\u2019s trio of Juninho, McCarty, and Schweinsteiger: \u201cThe team that wins the midfield is going to have a better chance, obviously, to win the game. They\u2019ve had major improvements in that field, so it\u2019s going to be a tough matchup. All those three guys are class, so we\u2019re going to have our hands full on the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent History:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

-The Fire won the most recent matchup between the teams on October 16, 2016 in Chicago. A 79th minute goal by David Accam proved to be the game winner in a 2-1 Fire victory. Diego Fagundez and Michel de Leeuw also scored in a match that ended with both teams playing a man down, as Luis Solignac and Brad Knighton were both given red cards.<\/p>\n

-Overall, there were four matchups between the Revolution and Fire in 2016, with the Revolution going 3-1-0. The Revolution had the benefit of home field advantage in all three of their victories, which included a 2-0 win on May 15, a 1-0 win on July 24, and a 3-1 semifinal win in the U.S. Open Cup on August 10.<\/p>\n

-The Fire barely hold the all-time series lead, with 23 wins to the Revolution\u2019s 21. The teams have also tied a total of 11 times over their history.<\/p>\n

3 Things to Know:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1) Last week, Diego Fagundez became the first Homegrown field player to total 10,000 MLS minutes. Fagundez has started all five of the Revolution\u2019s games this season, playing 428 minutes and registering an assist. In his MLS career, he\u2019s scored 30 goals and notched 16 assists since debuting with the Revs in 2013.<\/p>\n

2) Rookie Josh Smith, who has started the last two games for the Revolution, underwent surgery on Monday for a thumb fracture suffered during the Portland game. Despite playing against Houston, Smith\u2019s status was unknown as of Wednesday, according to Coach Jay Heaps: \u201c\u201cWe\u2019re going to see what the next day or two looks like. Obviously, it was a surgery that had to be done. You want to have your thumb. I think his performance on Saturday was excellent knowing that [he] basically [had] a thumb out of place. The swelling has come down and now he\u2019s had the surgery, so we\u2019ll see as the week progresses. We feel that we\u2019ve got a good back line competition in Ben [Angoua] and Toni [Delamea] and Je-Vaughn [Watson] and different guys that play that position.\u201d<\/p>\n

3) Kelyn Rowe started at left back last week for the Revolution, marking his fourth start on the backline for New England. In those four games, the Revolution have a record of 3-0-1 with four clean sheets.<\/p>\n

Score prediction:<\/strong> This is a difficult game to call, as Chicago has a ton of talent, but may still be in the process of getting accustomed to one another. How effective will they be against a New England defense that has recently found its footing? Meanwhile, New England hasn\u2019t generated much offense on the road so far this season, but have faced Portland, Colorado, and Dallas, all of whom are well above Chicago\u2019s level defensively. I predict a 1-1 draw, but truthfully, this game could go either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revs will face Bastian Schweinsteiger and the Fire on Saturday in Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":45032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[891,1245,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Kamara-1.png?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45031"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45031"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45036,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45031\/revisions\/45036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}