DC United and the Chicago Fire will seek to build what could be the results of the watersheds when they meet on Saturday evening in the national capital.
DC (4-7-6, 18 points) scored on two corner kicks in the first half of an upheaval 2-1 at FC Cincinnati last weekend.
The Brazilian Gabriel Pirani scored the first, then provided the last cross to Conner Antley the second while the black and Red managed a race without a victory of six games in all the competitions.
Now, the task will reduce consecutive results to try to fill a gap of seven points between 12th place DC and the nine qualifying places of the Eastern Conference.
“Internally, we believe in ourselves to be able to compete with anyone,” said DC director Troy Lesesne. “And to get a little more of this external confidence, I think we have to produce more results like that. And that is the kind of the next piece of this conversation, so that it is not an aberrant value.”
Chicago, the eleventh place, could be one of the teams that DC must exceed to reach the playoffs. But the fire is on their own restoration mission under the former director of the American national team Gregg Berhalter.
Chicago (6-5-4, 22 points) won a surprising 3-1 victory in Orlando City last weekend, his fifth victory out of six competitions and third in MLS Play.
Philip Zinckergenntel scored his sixth goal of the season, then helped Hugo Cuypers on his ninth and 10th at the top of the team one minute intervals while the fire ran to an early advance.
From there, it is a question of attrition for a defense of Chicago which gave 26 shots to the host lions, but only one goal.
“I think the guys fought very hard and had an excellent lead in the match, and they mainly held up for the second half,” said Berhalter. “But I think that the maintenance is really important, because it fears that you can do it, and I think it was a big step.”
– field level media
