Match Recap: Huntsville City FC run rampant on Chicago Fire FC II, win 4-1

(Image courtesy of Huntsville City FC)

In 2024, it took Huntsville City FC 11 games to get their first victory, but in 2025, it has taken just 90 minutes. It’s now been two trips to Bridgeview, Illinois for the Rocket Men, and both times they will be heading back down south with a victory, though this time they return with all three points after a 4-1 dismantling of Chicago Fire II.

The scoring was opened by former Fire II player Christian Koffi in the 15th minute, he received the ball off a bad giveaway and left no doubts in his finish. However, Chicago replied in the 22nd minute courtesy of Trip Fleming, and the two sides were locked at 1-1.

Then it was Koffi again, this time from the penalty spot in the 37th minute to give the visitors their lead back. But that wasn’t all from Koffi before the halftime break. Six minutes later, Koffi fired a ball across the face of goal forcing an instinct reaction from a Fire defender, resulting in an own goal to make it 3-1.

Then, after a period of sustained Huntsville control, the scoring was finished in the 86th minute as Gunnar Studenhofft got on the end of a brilliant through ball from Isaiah Jones and drove into the box before lashing the ball into the back of the net to give Huntsville four goals and all three points. Let’s dive in.

Lineup

(Image courtesy of Huntsville City FC)

There were no real surprises in the lineup for Huntsville, frankly I got a lot less wrong in my lineup prediction than I was fearing I might.

Up front, it was a three consisting of Christian Koffi and Damien Barker John flanking Gio Miglietti in the middle. Further back in the midfield we also had a three, as Ethan O’Brien, Pep Casas, and Moises Véliz occupied the center of the park. Functionally however, O’Brien more often stayed forward in the space of a more traditional 10.

At the back, joining Erik Lauta in goal was Tyshawn Rose, Kevin Carmichael, Zach Barrett and the captain Blake Bowen.

The Numbers

Huntsville City FC

Shots- 8

Shots on target- 5

Possession- 48%

Corners- 3

Yellow Cards- 3 (Moises Véliz, Ethan O’Brien, Tyshawn Rose)

Chicago Fire FC II

Shots- 11

Shots on target- 4

Possession- 52%

Corners- 4

Yellow Cards- 1 (Harold Osorio)

Red Cards- 1 (Harold Osorio)

Analysis

I’ll be doing a deeper dive into this game later in the week over at SixOneFive Soccer, so I encourage you to subscribe over there if you haven’t already, but to sum it up, the performance put on by Chris O’Neal’s team today was emblematic of an intra-club pyramid that is all pushing in the same direction.

Much of the same patterns of play and passing sequences you saw from Nashville SC on Saturday were present in the play of Huntsville City FC on Sunday. The same kinds of issues Nashville caused Portland on the counter press, Huntsville did to Chicago in the same way.

The whole academy to Huntsville to Nashville umbrella finally seems to have a coherent top down club philosophy to work with, something that has not been present in the past.

While Huntsville didn’t create the number of chances their parent club did the night before, the quality of chances they were creating was generally very high. Over half of Huntsville’s shots ended up on target, which is a huge percentage. There’s still some things to clean up, but a lot of that can be explained away by a matchday squad that featured 13 debutants.

More consistent play will come for Huntsville, but at least on this day, the result has already arrived.