Revolution vs Fire: Fire Heat Map and Touch Map (Game 2: March 8th 2020)

Originally shared on my Twitter account, publishing here for posterity’s sake ). Gifs are created from WhoScored.com’s OPTA data. Fire drew 1-1 from a big switch from Alvaro Medran to Djrodje Mihalovic, who crossed the ball into Jonathan Bornstein for an edge of the box knock-on header.

 

New England Revolution vs Chicago Fire FC touch-map from March 8th 2020:

Fire trotted out the same starting 11 and formation that they did in Week 1: a 4141.

Brandt Bronico (RB) looked considerably better in game two, but you can see how the Fire game plan was to shade on his side of the field, with Robert Beric (ST) up top, Frankowski (RM) high-right,  (CM) Fabian Herbers heavy on the right and Johan Kappelhof (CB) and Mauricio Pineda (CDM) holding it down behind him.

Beric took a beating, and showed  14 losses of possession in this match. Playing away to a physical revs team, Beric was in charge of being the hold-up guy in a direct attacking style the Fire played for long stretches of this match.

 

New England Revolution vs Chicago Fire FC heat-map from March 8th 2020

Rookie Mo Pineda played fabulously, but not perfectly. He showed some slick evasive moves on the ball, and would spring forward from deep to prevent Revs from turning with the ball.  I also am admiring the positional role of the young midfielder — look how disciplined he was on the heatmap above sitting behind Bronico.

I also wanted to call out how well USBNT call-up Djodje has performed at Left-Mid in two games thus far this season.

A Twitter thought…

They need to find a way to keep Pineda in that starting 11.

It's still early , but it's crazy how just two months ago fire fandom was worried if they could even field a team. These guys may have built the deepest Fire team in a decade .

— Chilad Whitney (@Chiladwhitney) March 8, 2020

 

Other Heatmap/Touchmap Posts:

Sounders vs Fire Heatmap-Touchmap (March 1st, 2020)