Fire Year-In-Review: Up A Hill, Down A Mountain

The shock is still fresh among the Fire faithful, a team that finished third overall in MLS at the end of the 2017 season dropped 17 places by the end of 2018. When the Fire started, home games had one of the best atmospheres in MLS and carried that over to Toyota Park at the beginning. By the end of the season, it was as quiet as study hall. I could continue, but the focus is on what went wrong in 2018 for the Fire and the answer is a lot of things—many of them self-inflicted.

As I have stated in the past and it very much holds true now, a lot of this falls on president and general manager Nelson Rodriguez. He failed to adequately strengthen the squad in both transfer windows in 2018 in all area of the pitch. He handled the situation with Sector Latino and the supporters groups as a whole very poorly and came off as treating the club’s most ardent supporters with contempt. His last roundtable on November 1st was a mea culpa of sorts, but the excuses over the inability to close deals as described in Guillermo Rivera’s piece in the Athletic on November 7th can only go so far. Add to that the need to upgrade scouting, the academy, training facilities, etc, this club harldy looks like “a club of choice” as Rodriguez said it was at the start of the season.

What about Veljko Paunovic you ask? He had his mea culpa after the last match of the season against DC United, but he really was not given much to work with. His biggest fault was how he dealt with the center back position. Bastian Schweinsteiger being played at center back made many cringe even though he proved serviceable given the circumstances. Fans cringed more when Brandon Vincent was at center back. He wasn’t one, it showed, and he has since retired after an awful season.

As for the players, you expected some not to have as big a year as they did last year, but too many of them did. Aleksandar Katai was one of the few signings that did work, but there was a period just as the ink dried on his new deal with the Fire where his production dried up as well. In goal, what does it say when the two backup keepers received more plaudits than your #1 Richard Sanchez? The defense was exposed for lack of a true center back to partner with Johan Kappelhof after letting Joao Meira go. The midfield was exposed for a lack of a true #10 and a lack of speed after trading David Accam which exposed Nemanja Nikolic’s limitations as a striker who lacked service at times.

There is one other person to mention and one who really needs to take and deserves a lot of the blame, and that is owner Andrew Hauptman. The Fire have stagnated as MLS has grown exponentially this decade. While the followings in places like Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Toronto, and soon Cincinnati have been out of this world; the Fire’s are by Rodriguez’s admission, ‘too low’. While those aforementioned teams are very much relevant in their markets, the Fire are irrelevant in the third largest market in the US and apparently growing in irrelevance each day. Throughout all of this, Andrew Hauptman has been the one constant. He hasn’t spoken outside of press releases and club functions since 2013 and his perceived distance reflects the club’s distance in its relationship with its supporters. Indeed, many have wished that either Joe Mansueto bought a majority share earlier this year or that Cubs owner Tom Ricketts bought the club and move it to the proposed new stadium site in the city’s Lincoln Yards development.

I’ll be the first to say that what I have just said is nothing that you haven’t heard before. However, repetition is necessary because we need to continue to question the commitment of Andrew Hauptman in regards to this club and Major League Soccer’s commitment when clubs like the Fire are in the mess they are in and not just tout the likes of Atlanta, add second teams in New York and Los Angeles, and not just willing to let carpetbaggers hold teams (and the expansion process) hostage for sweetheart deals.

The Fire seemed to be finally going up a hill after the 2017 season. After the 2018 season, the Fire looked to have come down a mountain and some fans have had enough. Although most fans demand it, it is unlikely that Rodriguez or Paunovic will be removed anytime soon. It is  up to them to fix things and up to Hauptman to show true commitment to the club and its failing infrastructure, or the club should get fixed either by someone like Mansueto or by the league because the team in the third largest market in the United States should not be operating like a third-tier club.