The Chicago Fire are getting set for their first match against the Philadelphia Union in the MLS Cup Playoffs, but they were dealt a huge injury blow in the minutes before the game.<\/p>\n
Philip Zinckernagel, who led the team in assists and was second on the club in goals this season, was abruptly scratched from the lineup just minutes before the contest got underway in Philadelphia on Sunday.<\/p>\n
No reason was immediately given for Zinckernagel\u2019s removal from the lineup, and he\u2019ll be replaced by Maren Haile-Selassie, according to the Fire.<\/p>\n
Zinckernagel notched an assist in Chicago\u2019s 3-1 win over Orlando City in the wild card match Wednesday at Seat Geek Stadium, which helped the Fire to their first playoff win in eight seasons.<\/p>\n
He was one of the top offensive weapons for the league\u2019s second-best offense this season, with 15 goals and 15 assists on the year. The latter was one of the top totals in MLS on the season, and his 15 goals trailed only Hugo Cuypers in scoring for Chicago.<\/p>\n
The Fire will start their best-of-three series against Philadelphia Sunday, with the game airing on FS1.<\/p>\n
We will update this story with details as they become available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Fire are getting set for their first match against the Philadelphia Union in the MLS Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":334753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,11222,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-334752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-chicago-fire","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115442791464405994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}