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| Good enough. They were ties, man. |
What Happened Last Year
The Chicago Fire tied over half of their games in 2014. Literally. Think about that. That's less a season than an intellectual/physical exploration of mediocrity as a philosophical construct – e.g. can mediocrity to have "heights" and, if so, how many draws does it take to achieve the Platonic ideal? I didn't watch Chicago much in 2014. With the outcome at least heavily implied – again, literally, over half the time – I figured I knew how the games would end. I caught enough, however, to form some impressions, among them: Quincy Amirikwa's solid season as a bee-in-the-bonnet forward; Harrison Shipp's Rookie-of-the-First-Half-of-the-Year season; the now-departed Bakary Soumare, by all appearances, not giving a fuck (an impression confirmed by later comments); the essential wisdom of Gonzalo Segares' recent retirement; the nice send-off for the long-serving, lately-suffering Logan Pause; long-time midfielder Jeff Larentowicz shifted to the Fire backline midway through perhaps per Soumare's visible lack of shit-giving; Juan Luis Anangono...he played in Chicago last year, right? (Barely, but right). The Fire had a crap year by anyone’s standards. Six wins is the unpalatable flipside to all those ties...that's blue balls frustration. Worse, something larger loomed over the franchise – specifically, an apparently widely-held belief that the front office is reluctant to invest in winning (uh, turns out the evidence is scarce; swear it showed on message boards; or something). The contrast with the original, winning Fire teams must sprinkle salt in the wounds.
Final Stats: 6-10-18, 36 pts., 9th in the East; 41 gf, 51 ga
The Chicago Fire tied over half of their games in 2014. Literally. Think about that. That's less a season than an intellectual/physical exploration of mediocrity as a philosophical construct – e.g. can mediocrity to have "heights" and, if so, how many draws does it take to achieve the Platonic ideal? I didn't watch Chicago much in 2014. With the outcome at least heavily implied – again, literally, over half the time – I figured I knew how the games would end. I caught enough, however, to form some impressions, among them: Quincy Amirikwa's solid season as a bee-in-the-bonnet forward; Harrison Shipp's Rookie-of-the-First-Half-of-the-Year season; the now-departed Bakary Soumare, by all appearances, not giving a fuck (an impression confirmed by later comments); the essential wisdom of Gonzalo Segares' recent retirement; the nice send-off for the long-serving, lately-suffering Logan Pause; long-time midfielder Jeff Larentowicz shifted to the Fire backline midway through perhaps per Soumare's visible lack of shit-giving; Juan Luis Anangono...he played in Chicago last year, right? (Barely, but right). The Fire had a crap year by anyone’s standards. Six wins is the unpalatable flipside to all those ties...that's blue balls frustration. Worse, something larger loomed over the franchise – specifically, an apparently widely-held belief that the front office is reluctant to invest in winning (uh, turns out the evidence is scarce; swear it showed on message boards; or something). The contrast with the original, winning Fire teams must sprinkle salt in the wounds.
Final Stats: 6-10-18, 36 pts., 9th in the East; 41 gf, 51 ga
