Level Set 17, Chicago Fire FC: A Fresh Angle on the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Could actually be a better team this time...

What follows is a brief history of Chicago Fire FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

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.

Getting Reacquainted with Chicago Fire FC, MLS's Exercise in Meeting Your Unemployed Ex

He may be happy, but it's still putting lipstick on pig.

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 expansion season, 1998. 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 Stoichkov and Mexican great Cuauhtemoc Blanco and 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. They enjoyed their last “high-water mark” in 2017, when they finished third in the Eastern Conference (true story), but even then they face-planted out of the playoffs to 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. (Spoiler. Whoops.) 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 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.

Total Joy Points: 18

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
Wooden Spoon: 2004, 2015, 2016
U.S. Open Cup: 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2004

Somehow not the solution...

Long-Term Tendencies
Much like DC United (see previous chapter), Chicago provides another unsurprising example of a team having good numbers when they're, y’know, good, and bad numbers when they're not. Entirely related, 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 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 simply haven’t been good. Quelle surprise.

How 2024 Measured Up
In a phrase hinted it with supporting documentation above, really badly. Chicago finished 2024 dead-last in the East, 10 points out of the playoff picture and rarely looking like even their fans should bother with them by…I’m going with somewhere around June. And, in keeping with the recent trends noted above, they fell well on the wrong side of average on both sides of the goals equation (i.e., the were 13.5 below the averaged on goals scored and 8.5 goals above average on goals allowed). Being someone who tries to squeeze in as much meaningful action as I can in any given week, the Fire didn’t give me much incentive to watch them. That said, I have seen Chicago players do good and useful things on the field and on a consistent basis – e.g., Gaston Gimenez presents as a two-way midfielder with a strong bite on both sides of the ball, Bryan Gutierrez has skills to die for at age 21, even if the numbers haven’t entirely come-around, and…yeah, I guess that sums it up. Shaqiri missed most of the season and just seemed to complicate things when he showed up, and, based on what little I know and have watched, Cuypers suffered from a lack of a strong supporting cast? Maybe? This is me asking you, honestly.

Questions for Their 2025 Season
This one’s more statement than question, but here goes: Chicago has been so bad for so long that no reasonable person has any reason to believe they will improve next season. Only one theory explains the Fire’s comparatively long history of failing to get things right: they are bad at what they do. Until further notice, it’s that simple.

Getting Reacquainted with Chicago Fire FC, In a Word "Yikes"

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.

An MLS History Project: 1998, An Expansion Team Among Expansion Teams

Not the main subject, but a key sentiment of this post....

First, I have to get this off my chest. Look at the 1998 final standings. (Look at them!!) Who the hell has two different kinds of wins and losses? Who does that?

Moving on, 1998’s was the first set of final standings that I really looked at – as in, saw where each of the (now) 12 teams (wait for it) finished and a couple data points really take me back…far enough that I’m going to dip my toe into some research.

Until recently as…shit, 2019, the ’98 Los Angeles Galaxy team held the single-season record for most team goals scored: they banged in 85, and they had two fewer games in which to do it than Toronto FC would in 2019. While that record and the team that held it has always lurked around the back of my mind, I couldn’t have placed it in time with a gun to my head. I knew it was back in the day, but…damn. A quick scan of that roster (or just its leading scorers) gets you to “god-damn” pretty fast – not just because that’s a massive brick in the building of Cobi Jones’ reputation (19 goals, 13 assists?!), but also because Welton, a wiry whippet of a player (if I remember right) who stuck in LA for a few seasons, plus a(nother) career season for OG-legend Mauricio Cienfuegos (13 goals, 16 helpers) – but the larger point was that this team had a lotta ways to hurt. The Galaxy was just as solid on the other side of the field, with a backline made up of Robin Fraser, Dan Calichman, Greg Vanney, and Steve Jolley (or Paul Caligiuri) – and that’s before I get to the fullbacks (e.g, Ezra “EZ” Hendrickson). Between front and back, they had this great one-two between Daniel Hernandez – a really strong d-mid in his day, and I think he’s still remembered – and another player named Danny Pena. The latter played more box-to-box, but he had some real sharp ideas on the attacking end for a guy in that role. Pena didn’t last long, but he was hella fun for as long as he did and those two were great to watch when they clicked. Taken together, that team managed a 2:1 between goals for/against. Impressive, obviously…

…but the one name I see that really caught my eye in that data-pile was Carlos Hermosillo. People, myself 1,000% included, sometimes talk about Mexican National Team players as if they’re coming to MLS for the first time over the past couple seasons. Hermosillo does and doesn’t disprove that. He remains among the top scorers in Mexican National Team history, and his numbers for Cruz Azul for the 90s qualify as a big step past bat-shit; he was massive in his day…those just happened to come one or two before signing to MLS, and I guess that answers the question. Still feels notable that he had twice as many assists as goals…