The Chicago Fire rebirth, from an on-the-pitch standpoint, centers around three recently acquired players at the same exact position, central midfield. The stellar triad is composed of Juninho, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Dax McCarty.
Fire General Manager Nelson Rodriguez had a tremendous off-season, addressing the club’s primary talent need, and it’s resulted in a genesis of his on-field product.
The Fire, who have just one playoff appearance since 2009, and finished with the absolute worst record in all of Major League Soccer the past two seasons, are now suddenly the hottest team in the league.
Winners of four in a row, they host FC Dallas tonight sitting in second place in MLS’ Eastern Conference.
They’re five points behind first place Toronto, but with a game in hand on the currently table topping side. A win tonight cuts the deficit to just two, and strengthens the chances that this Chicago Fire team will make the postseason when all is said and done.
Rodriguez conducted his first media roundtable of the season Tuesday, and during the session he highlighted what his club needed to improve the most entering this year, and how they went about doing it.
“Our game model is one where we want to have the ball,” Rodriguez said.
“At the end of last season, one of the areas that we spoke about where we desperately needed to improve was in our ability to pass and receive, and to just do that well, with a higher degree of success.”
“The guys we brought in have a track record of doing that and have continued exhibiting that now.”
In a previous article, we posited the idea that one part of the Chicago Fire rebuilding plan slightly resembles one component employed by the World Series champion Chicago Cubs in their revitalization.
While the Cubs front office team of Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein loaded up on shortstops, or players who came up through the amateur ranks and minor league system as shortstops, the Fire has loaded up on central midfielders.
It’s a far from perfect analogy, as baseball and soccer are two very different sports, and the situations are quite differentiated, but we did ask Rodriguez about it on the call.
“I have paid attention to what the Cubs are doing, what the White Sox are doing now, what the Bulls have done in the past, how the Blackhawks resurrected themselves from near obscurity to three time Stanley Cup Champions,” he responded.
“So I do look at all those sports. I’m keenly interested in how the Bears are approaching their remake, but we see three really talented players, and I’m only referencing the three (Schweinsteiger, Juninho and McCarty) because they’re all really new to us, not to discount the midfielders that we already have on the roster.”
Rodriguez respectfully and professionally refuted our thesis.
“I wouldn’t relate it directly to the shortstop thing although Addison Russell seems to be a pretty fine player, but I think there’s always on-going learning from talented people in the industry.”
The analogy does hold on a couple levels though. Most of us played little league baseball, and many of us continued through to high school.
At those levels, the best player on the field almost always resides at shortstop. Like central midfield, it’s one of the most key positions, and its critical location means that much of the game action goes through it, and nearly all the action is directly affected by it.
Overall though, it’s really less about finding the specific position, and more simply just about acquiring elite players and inserting them into the lineup. McCarty is as important to this Chicago Fire team’s success as any single individual player.
“I’ve stated in the past, Dax McCarty had been a target, someone that we had pursued for a long time. Juninho, I think we were just nimble and opportunistic when he presented himself. I know there remains people who say we have three of the same players,” said the chief architect of the Chicago Fire rebuild.
“I would just say that we have three really good players.”
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Central midfield is something Rodriguez said he wanted to upgrade heading into this offseason, but when asked if he had a specific number of three in mind, he said no, adding “we knew we needed at least two.”
Of the troika, Schweinsteiger gets all the attention, and rightfully so given what a global superstar he is. The Captain of the 2014 World Cup Champions German side is the 998th most followed person on Twitter in the entire world, and second only to Dwyane Wade among Chicago athletes).
Yesterday Schweinsteiger acquired a medal, due to his 28 minutes of service for Manchester United in this year’s Europa League tournament.
United’s Europa Final triumph last night resulted in Schweinsteiger’s reward.
Said the Fire GM on the tremendous impact Schweinsteiger has had early on:
“I didn’t envision it happening that quickly, in terms of adding that piece, but clearly he has improved us on the field and off the field, it’s been a privilege and blessing to have him and we should enjoy him while we do.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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