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| Could actually be a better team this time... |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
Chicago Fire, aka, Chicago Fire FC, hold still-unbroken record of being the one and only team to win MLS Cup in its 1998 expansion season. And, as if to announce their hell, yes arrival, they won the U.S. Open Cup in the same season. The Fire remained highly-competitive nearly every season through 2009, reaching the semifinals of the playoffs or higher in eight of those twelve seasons (i.e., they reached MLS Cups in 2000 and 2003, so higher) – and winning the 2003 Supporters’ Shield, plus four U.S. Open Cups. The Fire went into their first twelve seasons in MLS looking like a contender and generally backing it up. Some of that followed from the “Marquee Player” rule still applying when Chicago joined the league in its third season (1998). When someone in Chicago’s front office went knocking around Eastern/Central Europe for talent, they found Piotr Nowak and Jerzy Podbrozny, both Polish, and a Czech sweeper named Lubos Kubik. With those three leading the way, the Fire played even with MLS’s best talent of the time and heads-and-shoulders above the rest. When those players left, and in surprisingly short order (in the order I listed them above, they left after 2002, 1999, and 2000, respectively), Chicago still had to one of the best, U.S.-based cores on an MLS roster, including Zach Thornton in goal (through 2006), (yes, that) Chris Armas in midfield (until 2007), Ante Razov banging in goals up top (in stints split between 1998-2000, and 2001-2004), and C. J. Brown keeping things steady in defense until 2010. A cast of characters rotated around those players in seasons to come – the standouts included Bulgarian legend(ary asshole) Hristo Stoichov and Mexican great Cuauhtemoc Blanco, plus on-again-off-again rising attacking talents like Justin Mapp and Patrick Nyarko. Those last two players actually open the path to a distinction: Mapp, as the smooth, genuinely productive winger, who played with Chicago through the back-end of its best seasons (2003-2010), Nyarko, as a hard-to-place forward/winger hybrid, who played at the end of their best seasons and through a lot of their worst (2008-2015). Head to head, Mapp blows Nyarko out of the water in terms of raw numbers…but you have to wonder how much Mapp benefitted from playing on a better team/in a better system than Nyarko. The worst possible version of that same question has haunted the Chicago franchise with the vengeance of a curse since the 2010 season. That same season they started their existence as the searing disappointment that Chicago fans endure and most MLS fans ignore. Until 2025 (more below), they enjoyed their last “high-water mark” in 2017, when they finished third in the Eastern Conference, but even then they face-planted out of the playoffs to Red Bull New York in the knockout round of one of MLS’s patented bloated playoff schemes. Everything on both sides of that has been literal carnage – up to and including back-to-back Wooden Spoons in 2015 and 2016, and a whole lotta missing the playoffs. In fact, that head-fake/fuck of a 2017 season aside, the Fire have finished 20th or lower in the MLS-wide standings for every season since 2015 – a run that includes a 28th-place finish in 2024. That brings me to the main thing that should keep fans of every other MLS team from drooping into an easy sleep: it’s not like Chicago hasn’t thrown money and effort at saving the ever-sinking ship – e.g., they had Serbian forward Nemanja Nikolic (crazy strike-rate) and German great, Bastian Schweinsteiger, between 2017 and 2019, and, as recently as last season, they took pretty big swings on Swiss hot-shot Xherdan Shaqiri and Belgian forward Hugo Cuypers. As evidenced by the above, all of that balanced out to a broad, “nah.” All of the stoutly average around those signings almost certainly played a role, but…all that started to feel like a gutted club/team culture years before those players arrived. The open question is the extent to which they’re a symptom (i.e., the players around them make them worse) or the cause (i.e., they just weren’t good/the right signings). Don't let the Joy Points* fool you on this one, because Chicago ain't good.
2025, Briefly
First, the good news: Chicago made the playoffs since 2017 (yayyyy!). Better, they had a strong, if not mighty attack for the first time since before my youngest daughter was born (she’s 21) – and how! Check out the numbers for the Fire’s leading scorers in 2025: Hugo Cuypers (17 goals, three assists); Philip Zinckernagel (15 goals, 15 assists), Brian Gutierrez (nine goals, six assists); Jonathan Bamba (five goals, ten assists); Andrew Gutman (three goals, ten assists). Their field players all had 2,000 minutes plus down to the seventh player, which made for a steady roster (something I have a better grip on after reviewing 17 teams) and, so long as both players and system are working, that’s a good thing! And yet, one can’t help but ask, did Chicago have a good season because they made the playoffs for just the third time since 2010(!), or did they, y’know, have a good season? It doesn’t take a lot of digging to see the main defect: they tied with Club du Useless Foot Montreal for sixth-worst defense overall and third-worst in the Eastern Conference by allowing 60 goals – which means the Fire needed every single one of the 68 goals they scored. Still, and perhaps even more to the point, Chicago showed an ability to beat just about any team in MLS on the right day – e.g., a 3-1 win at Vancouver in March, a 4-1 win at Charlotte in May, a 0-3 win at Minnesota in September, a 5-3 bat-grab of a game at Miami later in that same month -and have I mentioned that Chicago’s road record (9-6-2) looked a lot sharper than their home record (6-5-6)? Getting swept by Philly in Round One of the playoffs couldn’t have felt great – especially when the decisive (0-3) loss happened at home (also, on brand) – but it surely has to beat the seven kicks to the head Fire fans received 2018-2024.
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| Does the "broken clock" thing work in 8-year intervals? |
Chicago provides an utterly unsurprising example of a team posting good numbers when they're, y’know, good, and bad numbers when they're not. Chicago’s knack for building more good defenses than bad ones over those early seasons carried them through leaner-attacking times that characterized their latter, less successful seasons (i.e., the second half of the 2000s). While it’s not so cut-and-dry as the defenses since 2010 just plain sucking, going over the average for goals allowed (five times), or even very over that same average (also, five times), has been the Fire’s normal since the 2013 season, aka, a long fucking minute for their fans. The attack has rarely been up to the task of lifting them up – in fact, they’ve gone over the league average for goals scored just four times over that same period and only well over once (in…you guessed it, 2017!) – and those combined basic, even fundamental, facts tell the story of a bad team. The Fire have rolled around with the worst in MLS for years now – and that gets to what makes 2025 so impressive. With rare and exactly one meaningful exception (yes. 2017) Chicago has been bad on both sides of the ball since 2013. And, yeah, the defense still sucks, so that’s what the front office works on, right? (Right?)
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
I see Brian Gutierrez as the only major loss of the off-season (to see if you concur, click here and scroll down), but, Robin Lod aside (great signing, for me), all I have for the additions are a list of names and fluffy bios (e.g., Anton (blah, blah) Saletros, Mbekezeli Mbokazi, Puso Dithejane and others). Saletros presents as a well-traveled d-mid with lots of experience and teams that keep taking him back (good sign, usually!) and Mbokazi’s a defender, at least, but last year’s defense clearly blocked Chicago out of the league elite, so here’s to hoping they’re not done on the defensive side or that they have one of those medbeds that right-wing conspiracists popped off about a couple months back, because I just noticed the absence of reliable starts for players not named Jack Elliott. Who I think needs help. After that, I like every attacking player on this team, Chicago was hella fun to watch in 2025 and, honestly, I don’t know how anyone could begrudge this team or, more to the point, this fanbase a great season or three. They have some great attacking pieces (see above), even with Gutierrez gone (fun, fun player) and Lod’s signing has “win now” written all over it, so here’s to hoping they have a good plan to shore up that defense.
Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 15
How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2003
MLS Cup: 1998
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2000, 2003
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 1999, 2002, 2006, 2025
Wooden Spoon: 2004, 2015, 2016
U.S. Open Cup: 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2004
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