It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled is here to dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. Let’s get right to it.
Winner: Hugo Cuypers and the flexible Fire
The Chicago Fire dispatched Sporting Kansas City by a 5-0 scoreline on Saturday in a pretty straightforward affair, as is the way in games featuring SKC these days. However, the ease with which Chicago collected all three points over the weekend doesn’t change the fact that with his 74th minute strike, star striker Hugo Cuypers wrote himself into Fire history by scoring in a club-record six-straight games.
Philip Zinckernagel ➡️ Hugo Cuypers
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 26, 2026
That's 3 unanswered for @ChicagoFire! pic.twitter.com/ctGrmMKSQx
Cuypers has now scored in every MLS game he’s played this season and with his second goal of the night in stoppage time, he moved one goal off the pace in the Golden Boot race with eight. Add his red hot form to the fact that the Chicago Fire have apparently cooled their interest in Barcelona superstar striker Robert Lewandowski, and things are looking up for Cuypers.
To be honest, the Lewandowski link never made a ton of sense to me. I get it from a marketing standpoint: the Polish striker is a big name. But the Fire simply don’t need a center forward.
