The 2020 Chicago Fire won just five matches out of 23 and Sporting Director Georg Heitz’s evaluation of the team led him to essentially stand pat for 2021. He noted, “[W]e don’t think that we lack a lot to be competitive, even with the best teams in this league.” This is reminiscent of famous last words from a college student rationalizing his failures: “I really understand the material; I just don’t do well on the exams.”
Heitz’s biggest offseason move was to trade midfielder Djordje Mihailovic for a boatload of Allocation Money. He also chose not to renew CJ Sapong’s contract. Allocation Money is the league’s most important currency and CF Montreal were willing to pay a lot to get Mihailovic. Spent wisely, Allocation Money can relieve salary budget problems. The Fire were unlikely to miss Sapong, a bench player on the wrong side of 30.
In the off-season, Heitz signed Stanislav Ivanov, Jhon Espinoza, and Chinoso Offor. In a certain sense, Luka Stojanovic and Johan Kappelhof were “new” signings because they barely played in 2020 due to injuries. Under normal circumstances, these moves would be typical of the roster retooling in any club from year to year.
But are the Fire operating under normal circumstances? Is a five-win team really close to competing for trophies? If the 2020 Fire lacked continuity due to the stop-and-start nature of a season dictated by the pandemic, should the 2021 Fire have not come roaring out of the gate?
Well, it has not happened. The Fire have a measly four points from seven matches, suffering their fifth loss of the season when they fell 1:0 at home to CF Montreal on Saturday. They’ve scored a league-low four goals, three of them coming courtesy of Stojanovic. The Fire have been shut out four times already this season. Yet, Heitz doubled down on his offseason roster strategy. Prior to the Montreal match, he said, “I told the players I still strongly believe in them, strongly believe in their talent, but we have to prove it now ….”
It’s a good thing someone believes in them because the fans have been tuning out rapidly. In the Fire’s four home matches so far, they were allowed to seat about 7,000 fans for the first two matches, and 12,000 for the last two. On only one occasion, the opener versus New England, did the Fire sell out all possible seats. On a sun-kissed Saturday afternoon versus Montreal, the Fire drew fewer than 6,800 fans. Fire owner Joe Mansueto was convinced that the team’s attendance problems could be solved by leaving an excellent soccer facility in Bridgeview and moving home games back downtown. The early returns indicate that fans will not flock to watch bad soccer, regardless of where it is being played.
Following Saturday’s disappointing outcome, coach Raphael Wicky echoed the positive vibes coming from Heitz. Although Wicky was not wrong when he said that the Fire were the better team, the fact is that the results are poor overall. Under his leadership, the Fire have never won a game when conceding the first goal.
The problem is two-fold. Firstly, some of the players in this roster are not MLS-level players. And the second problem is related to the first; Heitz and Wicky created this player pool, and in a few cases, have overvalued the talent.
Centerback Wyatt Omsberg has started for four consecutive matches, which is baffling, considering that there have been three occasions where Mauricio Pineda has been in the squad, but never saw the field. Pineda had a solid rookie season in 2020, when he transitioned from his role as a holding midfielder into a centerback. Kappelhof would also be a better choice than Omsberg, even considering some of Kappelhof’s shaky outings early in the season. Omsberg has been bouncing around several USL teams since 2016 and his play indicates that’s probably where he belongs. On a good team, Omsberg would struggle to find playing time. On the Fire, he’s somehow a starter in the middle of defense.
Similarly, Elliot Collier gets lots of opportunities, despite his obvious technical deficiencies. Against Philadelphia on May 8, Wicky sat Alvaro Medran and started Collier. The Fire lost 2:0 at home. Collier is a turnover machine, as evidenced by his 68% success rate of completing passes. His decisions are generally poor; dribbling when he should pass and not understanding when to shoot and when to give the ball up. In 2019, the Fire loaned Collier to Memphis 901 of USL and would have been well served if they had converted the loan into a transfer. If none of the Homegrown Players that make Wicky’s roster every week are not better than Collier, then the Fire are truly sunk.
Wicky should be building his team around the midfield duo of Medran and Stojanovic. But that pair have started together four times. It’s not a coincidence that the Fire’s two best performances (2:2 versus New England and 0:1 versus Montreal) have come in matches where Medran and Stojanovic have started together.
Stojanovic started on the bench versus DC United and Inter Miami. DC had taken an early 1:0 lead on the Fire. It was the kind of match where neither side impressed, and an injection of offense might have allowed the Fire to at least bring home a point. Wicky subbed in Javier Casas for Gaston Gimenez at halftime and then brought on Fabian Herbers, Collier, and Offor to find better attacking capabilities. Wicky used his final substitution with nine minutes to go and inexplicably replaced left back Miguel Navarro with 36-year-old left back Jonathan Bornstein. In a situation that clearly called on Wicky to utilize every available attacking player, he instead brought on one left back for another one and left Stojanovic rooted to the bench. Wicky’s decision lands somewhere between inexplicable and criminal.
Against Miami, Wicky preferred Herbers in midfield over Stojanovic, but brought him on for the final 31 minutes. Stojanovic put the Fire in a position to win the game when he placed his free kick in just the right spot so that Miami goalkeeper John McCarthy could bundle the ball over the goal line.
On Saturday, Wicky must have concluded that Medran and Stojanovic might be a potent attacking combination. They both played the full 90 and the Fire produced their best sustained attacking soccer of the season in the second half. No goals resulted, but it wasn’t for lack of attacking ideas. As usual, finishing by the Chicago Fire was substandard; the soccer equivalent of “not doing well on the exams.”. (Not to mention Omsberg and his amateurish defending on the Montreal goal.)
I happen to agree with Heitz and his confidence in the roster, up to a point. There are plenty of players available who can reasonably compete in MLS and a few who should have been jettisoned yesterday. But the top priority for any coach is to identify the best eleven players and to find a way to get the most of out of them. It’s clear that Wicky is not able to identify that best eleven, as he continues to dole out playing time to players of inferior ability. Wicky has been at the helm for 31 games over one-plus seasons and still has not figured it out. In many sports, firing the coach is usually easier than firing all the players. In the case of the Chicago Fire, they may not be able to get out of their own way until they find a more competent coach.
(Photo courtesy of Rueters.)
Be First to Comment