 |
| Hello Darkness, my old friend. |
[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]
Thumbnail History
A few posts back, I credited Atlanta United FC as the first expansion team to hit the ground running at full sprint. Goddamn my ahistoricity because the OG title for that clearly belongs to the Chicago Fire, aka, Chicago Fire FC, aka, the most searing disappointment in MLS history. That bold claim demands an explanation, naturally, so here’s my best stab at it.
While it would dry up between (roughly) 2000 and 2007, the “Marquee Player” still applied when Chicago joined the league in its third season (1998) and someone in their front office decided to raid Eastern/Central Europe for talent. At least two players they found – Piotr Nowak and Lubos Kubik – played even with the best talent of the time and heads-and-shoulders above the rest. That’s how the Fire pulled off a feat never replicated before or since – i.e., an expansion team winning MLS Cup in its first season. Hell, they even did the Baby Double by winning the U.S. Open Cup in the same season. Chicago reached MLS Cup two more times over its first seasons of simple existence - in 2000 and again in 2003 - and they won the U.S. Open Cup in both of those season, I don’t know, maybe to rub it in. That string of success and near-success came to a screeching halt in 2004 when the Fire got spanked by its first Wooden Spoon (note the word “first”). The team righted the ship over the next five seasons, finishing high in a slowly-expanding league – their 7th-place finish in 2007 was their worst from that period – while also winning yet another U.S. Open Cup…after which, and with literally two seasons excepted, they became the team MLS fans know today. Outside 2012 and 2017 – and they finished (in context) a crazy impressive third place in the latter – Chicago has missed the post-season every year starting in 2010. The Wooden Spoon stung their little tuchuses twice during that time – back-to-back seasons, in fact (2015 and 2016) - and they’ve finished in 20th place or lower in every season since 2015, save what now must feel like a heartbreaking success in 2017. In a word, yikes.
Best Season(s)
Rather than over-think this, I’m going to roll with 1998, i.e., the Baby Double triumph, but I’m guessing both the organization and its fans always assumed that the team’s best days would return in every season through 2009. Just sit with that for a while. Seriously, it’s hard to remember that Chicago fielded consistently good teams over its first decade-plus in MLS. Look, I can feel the doubt bleeding through my monitor as I type, but these were fun, exciting and interesting teams…hold on, I’m getting a report from future sections in this post telling me to dial that back.
Long-Term Tendencies
If you mean besides heaping unrelenting pain on their fans, a couple things stand out – some of them rather curious. A couple flaming turd seasons aside – three of them quite recent (2021-2023) – Chicago has generally posted respectable, and sometimes good, top-line numbers in offense and defense (i.e., goals for and against). They’ve had their share of terrible seasons, obviously, but they’ve only gone 8-10 goals above the league average on goals allowed in four seasons of 26 season and they only went over at all in six more. More often than not, then, Chicago has put together decent defenses and more good ones than bad. They refined that broad averageness into something like an identity in those semi-successful 2005-2009 seasons, but it’s a mirror-image detail on both sides of that period of Aggressive Okay that succinctly answers the question, “who did the bad things to Chicago?” The Fire’s attack was fire over five of their first six seasons (1998-2003): they didn’t go wildly over the average for goals scored, but they typically scored 8-10 over in those seasons. Now, if I may direct your attention to the last three seasons of Fire football, you’ll find them between 11 and 12 goals-scored below average in 2021 and 2022, and seven off in 2023. To put that in more concrete terms, that pencils out to giving their fans a single goal per game, plus the loosest promise of a second, for three straight seasons (i.e., 1.06 goals/game in 2021, and 1.15 (rounding up) in both 2022 and 2023). Don’t get me wrong: Chicago fielded its last strong defense in 2008 – aka, point to anywhere in a Chicago line-up and you'll be pointing near enough to a problem – but nothing has hurt this team lately more than an ability to find attacking talent and shape it into something that functions, never mind threatens.
 |
| That's it, old boy. Remember the good times... |
Identity: Portrait of Dorian Gray. Seriously.
Joy Points: 2, which shows how quickly three Wooden Spoons diminish any accomplishments. Still, those two points were good for 18th overall on Joy Points. Longevity strikes again…
10 Names to Know (an all-time list, for reference, shit format again, sadly)
Lubos Kubik (1998-2000)
I doubt I could make any fan who started following MLS after say, 2015, fully appreciate how…just shitty everything on and about the field looked in the league from 1996 to 2005. The skill-set for 75% of the defenders, in particular, topped out at just getting in the way. Kubik, a big, experienced Czech defender, erased that perception on arrival because the man could play out of the back: long passes, short ones, free-kicks, the man did it all and made ball-progression look easy. I’d seen that in the EPL before him, but all that? Rare as a white tiger in 1990s MLS.
Piotr Nowak (1998-2002)
The intensity he brought to the game came back to bite him when he turned to coaching (sounded like a lunatic, honestly), but Nowak was something else in transition. Despite what his overall numbers say, he just murdered defenses (starting in midfield) over his first two seasons in the league. Like Kubik, he was something rare for his time, something defenses hadn’t seen before…and to think, he might have joined MLS as a young man, or even his prime, had he signed with MLS 20 years later…
C. J. Brown (1998-2010)
Just a smart, athletic defender Chicago found in the American lower divisions who went on to anchor Fire defenses – most of them pretty good – for 13 seasons. Having Brown all those seasons meant never having to think about the defense beyond the question of who to pair him with – and that went double for the nine seasons Zach Thornton prowled behind him in the nets.
Chris Armas (1998-2007)
Another mainstay for those early, successful Fire teams, another strong American defensive midfielder from what can sometimes feel like the glory days, Armas excelled at the dirty work, while also bringing a little more speed of thought and precision in the other direction. Against the general back-drop (see note on 1998-2005 seasons), he gave a taste of what better players could do at his position.
Ante Razov (1998-2000, 2001-2004; things didn’t last long with Spain’s Racing Ferrol in 2001)
Still the seventh-all-time goal-scorer in MLS history at 114 (and being challenged, if at a slower pace, by Josef Martinez), Razov was pretty damn complete forward – i.e., big enough to play the target-man, but also more both-footed than most and a couple notches about respectable from range. Very hard to defend, basically, and lethal when he got a look. Rightfully a Fire legend.
Hristo Stoichov/ Cuauhtemoc Blanco (2000-2002 and 2007-2009, respectively)
Here, because the Fire had this yen for aging star players back in the day and a knack for finding fun ones - like these two. Due to the era – again, these were MLS’s lean seasons – signings like this worked better than they do today. Age held back both players a little, but they played like they cared, posted decent numbers, and put butts in seats. The glory days were drying up by the time Blanco left, but they weren’t over yet…
Justin Mapp (2003-2010)
Razov aside, all the attacking players named above came from overseas, but Mapp joined Chicago as an exciting young American talent and proceeded to have the career to back it up. He struggled with injuries a bit, but still managed eight seasons with Chicago and put up some solid supporting case numbers – if more assists than goals. To repeat a theme, Mapp gave the Fire a reliable attacking option. Back when they had that kind of thing. Paging Chris Mueller…
Patrick Nyarko (2008-2015)
A more or less immediate successor to Mapp and nearly as effective. They both played wide, had the pace and technique to unsettle fullbacks/defenses, and more set-up man than finisher; it's as if Chicago had a player profile in mind for Mapp's/Nyarko's position, only without figuring out how to complement it. One has to wonder how good both players could have been if they had someone like, say, Razov to play to.
Dominic Oduro/David Accam (2011-2012 and 2015-2017, respectively)
Even if the latter came from something closer to the same mold as Mapp and Nyarko, I recall both of these players arriving as solutions to Chicago’s attacking…limits. Both had enough moments to get fans and pundits believing they only needed a little more time – Oduro even had this freaky thing in the 2010s where he’d post solid numbers every other season – but neither repaid that belief for long. Is Chicago’s scouting overly hopeful, or just bad? Hold on…
Bastian Schweinsteiger/Xherdan Shaqiri (2017-2019 and 2022-2024, respectively)
If the late scouting/decision-making thereon has a flaw, it comes from leaning too deeply into the Los Angeles Galaxy theory of banking on one great (late-career) player to turn-around/carry the entire team. They play from different spots on the field, of course – even if Schweinsteiger came forward often enough – and the German definitely enjoyed more success than his Swiss counterpart, who has openly flirted with the dread “bust” label, but going big hasn’t panned out for the Fire the way it (marginally) used to. You can smell the rot around this team….
Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything
24th overall behind a gently vulnerable defense and a bumbling attack. The Fire had their games, but they also failed to score at all in 14 games across 2023 – and with the balance of them coming down the stretch. It was a radical failure to get results, so more of the same basically.
Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition
Like more than a few people, I cut Chicago a lot of slack in 2023, at least right up until the wheels came off down the stretch. And there are players to get excited about on this roster (as of January 29, 2024) – the youngster Brian Gutierrez chief among them – and I liked what I saw from Gaston Gimenez in midfield and most of what I saw from Carlos Teran in defense. Oh, and they may have another budding goalkeeping great in Chris Brady, a successor the last one, Gabriel Slonina. Going the other way, I saw Rafael Czichos, their captain(?), fuck up catastrophically in defense and both Shaqiri and newer signing, Jairo Torres, produce seasons that makes you wonder whether the Fire’s FO could pick a designated player with Messi and Ronaldo lined up with one visibly out of shape guy in the mix. From there, “solutions” like Kacper Przybylko failed to live up to his calling and, in fine Fire tradition, they didn’t get much out of new-to-2022 signing Maren Haile-Selassie and they couldn’t get even 10 games out of second-season signing Chris Mueller. I don’t know how close all that comes to “best-laid plans.” I also can’t believe they’ll get enough out of 2023-24 off-season signings, Tom Barlow (forward) and Andrew Gutman (defense/wild card), and second-year forward Georgios Koutsias, whom I’ll now confess I know nothing about, to wake up from what has become a decade-long waking nightmare Shit is bleak. I don’t know Chicago well, but I’m pretty damn sure I know them well enough to say they haven’t done enough to keep up with the Eastern Conference Joneses.
* Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points
Wooden Spoon: -3 points
No comments:
Post a Comment