Chicago Fire FC host Inter Miami on Saturday evening (8:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass), with a bumper crowd expected at Soldier Field and an urgent need for a victory as they hunt a late surge into the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
In that regard, there’s something of a Groundhog Day feeling along the Lakefront this week.
“We were in the same kind of situation last year where we played Miami, sold-out crowd came,” said Fire head coach Frank Klopas on Wednesday. “These are the moments where you got to grasp these opportunities.”
They certainly did so last Oct. 4. While main attraction Lionel Messi missed the match due to injury, those in attendance were treated to five goals as the Men in Red (though they wore navy blue on that occasion) won the Eastern Conference six-pointer in some style, riding a sudden second-half surge to a 4-1 result that pushed them above the playoff line before 62,124 spectators, conversely robbing the Herons of control of their own postseason prospects.
Highs and lows
Yet it proved another false dawn for a fanbase that’s seen too many.
The Fire lost their final two games and slipped below the line, where they’ve spent most of this season, too. Xherdan Shaqiri, their star that night, remained unable to sustain anything approaching that form and left the club by mutual consent this month. It was a merciful end to one of the most disappointing chapters in MLS’s Designated Player era, accompanied by news that sporting director Georg Heitz, who has yet to oversee a playoff qualification in his four-plus seasons in charge, will depart Chicago at year’s end.
While difficult results have remained for the 13th-place Fire, hope springs anew in the Windy City. This summer’s turnover offers a chance to turn the page again, and this weekend marks their first home game since it all went down. As it turns out, there’s legitimate cause for optimism in the bigger picture.
“We've seen our attendance increase 25% year over year. Our sponsorship roster has almost tripled in the last year,” explained Fire President of Business Operations Dave Baldwin to MLSsoccer.com this week. “This weekend, it’s still to be determined if Messi will make an appearance, but we have over 50,000 tickets out for that match. So lots of positives in terms of the local business community and local fans and supporters coming out and showing up for the Fire despite team performance that is not top of the table.
“So we are making a lot of inroads with the community locally.”
Investment mode
Amid all the disruption COVID-19 inflicted on professional soccer across North America and the entire planet, Chicago weathered more than their share considering how its timing marred their 2020 move back to Soldier Field after owner Joe Mansueto spent upwards of $65 million to buy out their lease at SeatGeek Stadium to return to downtown. A huge turnout was slated for their first game back at the Lakefront since 2005, only for the global pandemic to scotch the occasion and blunt any hopes of ensuring momentum.
It’s taken time, and Klopas is the first to point out that winning makes it all work better, but the soccer-mad city seems to be taking notice of their team. There were zero annual suite holders at Soldier Field when Baldwin arrived at CF97 at the start of 2023; today there are 48. A source with knowledge tells MLSsoccer.com that the Fire’s revenues have more than doubled over the past two years, a rate of growth second only to Miami’s and, perhaps, a sign of awakening for one of the league’s longest-sleeping giants.
Mansueto remains in investment mode. His 2021 acquisition of Swiss club FC Lugano has provided a useful European affiliate, with a pipeline of players moving in both directions, to say nothing of the Bianconeri’s upturn in fortunes: Lugano have since won the Swiss Cup, finished runners-up in the Swiss Super League and repeatedly qualified for UEFA continental competitions.
Meanwhile, the Fire are splashing around $100 million on a new training ground, the Endeavor Health Performance Center, currently under construction in the Roosevelt Square neighborhood on the city’s Near West Side. It’s slated to open by year’s end, and the Fire expect transformational effects.
“It's one of the only performance centers in all of MLS that's located within city limits, and it'll be the most expensive and one of the most expansive. It's on 26 acres, five-and-a-half pitches,” said Baldwin. “That is an amazing investment from our owner, Joe Mansueto, and also will be used for community-building efforts. We've partnered with the local community to ensure that not only is it a great place for our first team and our academy and MLS NEXT Pro teams to train, but it's also a community asset.”
Opportunity awaits
For Chicago, as with much of MLS, a visit from star-heavy Miami represents a turn in a bright global spotlight and a chance to reintroduce themselves to local soccer fans who aren’t regularly turning up to watch the home team.
Last fall the Fire sought to soften the disappointment of Messi’s injury woes with a “fan-first credit guarantee” that enabled fans to apply a chunk of their ticket price towards a match this season; Baldwin says more than a thousand of the first-timers who attended the 4-1 win bought season tickets for ‘24 via the program. This year, a postgame concert featuring R&B star Jason Derulo will help add to the experience.
Then there’s the club’s renewed commitment to their academy system and its service of a massive talent pool in a metropolitan area with more than nine million people. Part of the reason CF97 could cut bait on Shaqiri was the emergence of 21-year-old attacker Brian Gutiérrez, who headlines a wave of homegrown talent along with starting goalkeeper Chris Brady. Two months ago their Under-15 team won their age group’s MLS NEXT Cup championship, with several standouts claiming individual awards, and Baldwin proudly describes how the club hired a full-time educator to travel with academy teams on road trips to out-of-town tournaments.
All that helps connect a through-line from the first team to the academy to a sprawling array of recreational offerings.
“One massive opportunity is we have one of, if not the largest, youth soccer programs in all of MLS. We have 40,000 participants through our rec soccer program: 25,000 youth and 15,000 adults,” said Baldwin.
“If you look at our senior roster, you have Guti, you have Chris Brady, you have Chris Mueller, Mauricio Pineda, Andrew Gutman, who's a player who got away and played at other teams in MLS, and we were able to bring him back. There are a lot of homegrown players within our first team who are either starters or solid contributors and play a lot of minutes … and we have a variety of players who are quickly rising stars throughout the academy system, so hopefully that will translate long-term as well.”
Stadium dreams
Perhaps most intriguing of all: The emergence of real optimism that the Fire could someday partner with the city on a new home of their own in Chicago’s urban core.
On one level it’s mandatory contingency planning given that Soldier Field’s primary tenants, the Chicago Bears, have proposed a new, $4.75-billion domed stadium project at the same site, leading to the eventual demolition of the historic venue. This will take years; the NFL franchise is seeking billions in assistance from the state of Illinois and even their best-case scenario involves opening their new home in 2028.
On another, it’s a tantalizing opportunity for the Fire to dream big.
“It's a little bit of a hurry-up-and-wait approach in that, to the extent of the potential of Soldier Field coming down, a lot of that will rely on the Bears and what happens with them,” said Baldwin, adding Mansueto already announced that a CF97 venue would be privately funded. “It's something that we're keeping a close eye on and having conversations around. There's no definitive timeline right now. But I also think it's not unrealistic to think that in the next five or 10 years, there's a real possibility where the Fire could be playing in a soccer-specific stadium.”
Playoff push
For now, the 1998 MLS Cup winners can focus on much more immediate tasks at hand. Like bringing that painful six-year postseason drought to an end this autumn, and finding the right choice for Heitz’s successor.
“The mindset right now is obviously on that playoff run. I know when those two things happened sort of simultaneously, it threw everybody for a little bit of a loop. But I wouldn't say it knocked everybody off their footing,” said Brady of the developments around Shaqiri and Heitz.
“The guys have done pretty well, I think, as you saw last week in a comeback [2-2 draw at New York City FC], to put the past behind them, and we take each game now as a final … We're all just trying to go game to game and make something happen.”
A foundational figure involved with most of the Fire’s existence, be it as a player, coach or front-office executive, Klopas is urging his squad to seize the moment and barge through the door that’s still ajar for them. As poorly as they played over the season’s first three months, Chicago sit just two points back of the East’s final playoff spot.
“It's in our hands,” said Klopas. “This is a big game, obviously, but the next three games are home for us, so it's a huge opportunity against really good teams that we've played well up to now, to play well consistently. I think the mentality of the team has been one, for me, that has never, ever given up, even throughout ups and downs.
“We're healthy, and we have a golden opportunity in front of us,” Klopas continued. “There's a lot on the line for the players, for all of us, and we want to finish strong. You can change the narrative. You can change perspective. You can change the way people perceive you just by the way you finish the season. And I'm excited, because I think these games really mean something, there's something on the line, there's more pressure, and I feel that always brings the best out of players.”
