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| 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.
