Chicago, NYC battle for playoff positioning (Sep 30, 2017)
The Chicago Fire will play in Major League Soccer's postseason for the first time since 2012, but they don't plan to coast through the final three regular season games.
Chicago (15-10-6, 51 points) is currently fourth in the Eastern Conference standings heading into Saturday's game against the New York City FC at Toyota Park in Chicago.
In the teams' second meeting this season, the Fire hope to make up ground on New York City as they shoot for a higher seed in the upcoming MLS playoffs.
New York (16-8-7, 55 points) is currently second in the East followed by Atlanta.
After struggling through July and August, the Fire are now 3-1-1 in their last five games, including a 4-1 victory over San Jose on Wednesday as Djordje Mihailovic scored his first career goal and Nemanja Nikolic collected his 19th and 20th of the season.
Nikolic took over the all-time Fire scoring record set by Ante Razov, who had 18 in 2000. He now shares the league scoring lead with Portland's Diego Valeri.
"The guys, they know what they needed to do," Fire head coach Veljko Paunovic said after Wednesday's game. "I think the guys were very motivated. We just removed all the rocks on the road and the guys performed fantastically."
Chicago, which had engineered the biggest MLS turnaround after finishing last in 2016, is 11-2-2 at home while New York is 6-6 with three ties away from Yankee Stadium.
New York City is unbeaten in its last five league matches against Chicago with an average of 2.4 goals scored per game. The visitors have a 3-1 all-time series lead with two ties.
Neither team has any suspensions.
New York City FC is coming off a 1-0 victory at Montreal and is slowly returning to health after a six-week stretch of injuries.
Forward David Villa, the all-time leading goal scorer in Spanish national team history, is very much in the chase for the MLS scoring title with 19 goals. He leads the league with 118 shots.
Saturday's game marks the return of former Chicago goalkeeper Sean Johnson to Toyota Park. Johnson, who has started 29 games and has 85 saves for New York City, played seven seasons for the Fire.
"It's going to be really special for me returning to this stadium," Johnson said this week. "It's where I started my career and had the opportunity to become a professional soccer player. ... Of course, it's going to be a bit weird to be on the opposite side in the warm-ups and in the away locker room but to be in front of familiar faces will feel good."
