After the 2016 season, then-Fire General Manager Nelson Rodriguez said during a roundtable that back then the Fire had learned how to be competitive, but didn’t learn how to win and emphasized bringing in a player who had been in big moments, won in those moments, and could improve the team’s psyche. To that end, in came Bastian Schweinsteiger after Dax McCarty, Juninho, and Nemanja Nikolic. The team’s psyche did improve in 2017 as they made the playoffs and finished with the third-best record in MLS, but it didn’t last long as the team regressed badly the next few years.
Fast forward to after the 2021 season, the Fire are in a similar boat and sporting director Georg Heitz realized that in the press conference to formally introduce Xherdan Shaqiri.
“We lacked winners,” said Heitz. “And to have not only Xherdan, we have other players who are winners, but Xherdan definitely has one quality: he’s a winner. He has won a lot in his career.
“We wanted to bring a couple of really highly skilled players, and with also mentality. We need more confidence on the field, and we are really looking forward to seeing Xherdan, but also the other new players and the players who are still here to perform in the upcoming weeks.”
So this season, in comes Raphael Czichos who has helped two teams get promoted to the Bundesliga. In comes Kacper Przybylko who led the Philadelphia Union in scoring last season and helped them to the Supporters’ Shield. In comes Jairo Torres who helped Atlas to their first league title since 1951. That is not to mention a new coach in Ezra Hendrickson who has been part of championship staffs in Seattle and Columbus as an assistant and is getting a chance to lead a team back to those heights.
Of course, Monday was the formal introduction of Shaqiri who has won at Liverpool and Bayern Munich and will represent Switzerland at the World Cup. With the addition of Shaqiri, there is genuine anticipation as the Fire embarks on their 25th season starting Saturday at Inter Miami.
“Well, I mean, it’s exciting times. I think throughout the organization, we’ve brought in what we feel are like four quality players, and so the excitement is there,” said Fire head coach Ezra Hendrickson.
“There’s some anticipation for the beginning of the season. I personally am happy and I’m restless. I can’t wait for the first kick on Saturday. So it’s good times for the Club.But that being said, as Georg alluded to earlier, you bring in the players but now you have to perform, and now you have to have the right results because we are in a result-based business and we need to win some games. But we are doing what we can, and that started by getting the right players, the players we felt could fit the organization and what we’re looking for, and now we just have to make sure that we put the right team on the pitch and we play some good football and win some games, because that’s what it’s all about.”
The hope is that the Fire now have the personnel to avoid being the third team in MLS history to miss the playoffs five successive seasons. The season will be a success if Shaqiri, Przybylko, et al. can perform the way they have as winners and the former is especially looking to be successful here.
“Yeah, I saw already the team in the training camp, and there are a lot of young players,” said Shaqiri. “I like to work with young players and to help them. Of course with my experience, I can give this team a lot, not only on the pitch, off the pitch, too.So yeah, I’m really looking forward to work also with the young guys and yeah, I want them also to get better every day and yeah, this is also important for me to work and to give my experience to these young players, and yeah, to give them the confidence to go in a game to win.
“This is the most important for me; that they want to work every day hard and to help this team.And, yeah, to try to win something, this is also important, to go in a game with a lot of confidence and I want to give them this confidence that in every game, you can win, and this is important to go in a game that you want these three points.”
The Fire have made a lot of progress off the pitch and trying to rebuild bridges between itself and the Fire faithful. Now, the task is getting it right on the pitch and it is hoped that the Fire may finally have the winners to become winners in 2022 and possibly further than it ultimately did in 2017.
