(Editor’s Note: Quotes from Gerog Heitz added.)
CHICAGO, IL–After the Fire ended their five-match winless streak on Wednesday at SeatGeek Stadium, reports are that Chicago Fire FC have sacked head coach Raphael Wicky. Frank Klopas will take over as interim coach for the rest of the season according to Hot Time in Old Town.
Wicky leaves after 21 months on the job with a 12-25-14 record (50 points in 51 matches) and is the sixth manager to be sacked in MLS this season. (Freddy Juarez left his post RSL to become an assistant at Seattle.)
“I’d like to thank Rapha for his tireless efforts to make us a better Club each day,” said Sporting Director Georg Heitz. “We felt this was the right time to notify him that we will not be exercising his 2022 contract option, as we begin to make decisions for next season. Rapha will always be a part of the Fire family, and we wish him all the best for the future.”
Heitz also cited that Wicky’s father was dealing with health issues back in Switzerland for which Wicky took some time away from the club to be with him so the club wanted to let him go now to be with his family.
The Fire are set to miss the playoffs for the tenth time in twelves seasons. The last two seasons have been especially disappointing under Wicky, new owner Joe Mansueto in his first two seasons as owner, and sporting director Georg Heitz.
After the end of the 2019 season, the Fire waited until November to sack Veljko Paunovic, until December 20th to hire Heitz, and December 27th to hire Wicky. The result was a rush to put together a roster that while it nearly made an extended playoffs in 2020, failed to win any of their last six games and missed out on the final day. They also had two chances to advance out of the group stage in the MLS-is-Back tournament in July 2020, but lost both their last two group games to San Jose and a threadbare at that time Vancouver squad to be eliminated in Orlando after opening with a win against Seattle.
The 2021 season has been marked by lack of scoring (last in the East), costly defensive breakdowns (too numerous to mention), and designated players not living up to their price tag (Robert Beric with just four goals this season and both Gaston Gimenez and Ignacio Aliseda being left off a trip to Montreal for violation of team protocols).
Wicky is not totally blameless in this. Heitz’s strategy of continuity for 2021 after the rush to build the roster for the previous year has backfired horribly and wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that very few would trust him to hire the next coach given the roster he helped built.
As for Joe Mansueto, it was hoped brighter days were ahead when he took over the Fire from Andrew Hauptman straight away. It has not happened yet. Granted, it took Jerry Reinsdorf seven years to make the Bulls a winner after he took over that franchise (24 for the White Sox) and the Ricketts also seven years from when they took over the Cubs. That said, one can hardly fault a Fire fan who wanted an instant turnaround after Hauptman’s disastrous tenure like the one the Blackhawks experience when Rocky Wirtz took over after his father Bill passed away.
One has to hope that he learns from what’s apparent now that it was a mistake to hire an MLS neophyte like Heitz and bring in people on the soccer side who know their way around MLS and can resurrect this club. (He appears to have learned his lesson with the logo.) It will matter not what club president Ishwara Glassman-Cherin and the business side of the club do if the on-pitch product continues to languish in the depths of MLS and see newer teams like Austin FC, Charlotte FC, and even St. Louis City SC pass them by in later years. It’s time for Mansueto to Stand and Deliver a winner to Chicago.
