as an old, I have a hard time paying for online media, but with the death of print journalism looming, it's only fair that web news start charging at least what newspapers used to for subscriptions. as you note, the other option is to get all our news from league and club PR departments. shorter: if we want good soccer journalism, we have to pay for it.
and we've still only got a 22 man roster. There's 24 guys under contract, sure, but 2 of them have to be gone before opening day, and meanwhile the dribbles of rumors are all about MORE internationals. Maybe Nimrod's "encyclopedic knowledge of MLS's byzantine roster rules" includes a secret international limit waiver.
Being a fan of this team is like calling up the air conditioning repair company on Saturday morning to fix your broken unit in your apartment during the dog days of summer and being put on hold by the operator leaving you to listen to the below for hours while you are sweating buckets and hoping they’ll get to you soon (they won’t).
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass are among the great American bands ever. Its a sound to make you smile. Four albums in the top ten simultaneously. And wasnt a one of them ever been to Tijuana.
I was trying to sum up some degree of optimism for the coming season without success. Once again we have an incomplete roster to start the year and what am I supposed to hope happens? This isn't a championship caliber organization who is rebuilding or reloading. Rather it seems it's just a warm body in a league of challengers to beat up on so that a league can exist. I'd rather root for a relegation fight than watch us barely not suck to no end. What's the point of this team?
The Chicago Fire have been relegated to the status of "this week's opponent", or MLS "Bum Of The Week" club.
“Get ready to lift the trophy this year.”-Paunovic when he signed his extension. (https://bit.ly/2X7SlCI) I assume he's referring to the Carolina Challenge Cup?
Maybe he's referring to red solo cups filled with Malört Fire fans will be drowning their sorrows with?
I said in the pre-season thread that nothing's changed, but I guess what I meant is that we still have the same malaise around the team that we've had constantly. Not pressing hard enough, allowing teams to destroy us while we have a man advantage. It's gotten to the point where I'm looking at this team and the problems seem to be more and more tactics based. We have a great attacking front and a weak defense. So we should be trying to play a style that will help keep the ball in the opponent's end and just keep bombarding the defense. Instead, we continue to try to play out of the back and while we may have the midfield personnel for that, we do not have the best defensive personnel and we are not playing to our strengths. You guys are joking about the "Just outscore them" philosophy, but that's how we need to play when we have the personnel that we do. We do not have good defense, but we should be attacking a whole lot more than what we did against Columbus. In 2017 we were able to pull apart defenses and tear them up a bit by moving the ball around in the back and working our way forward. We can't do that anymore. We need to stop pulling and start stabbing into the opponent's end with force. That's who we have and that's what we should be working with. That fact that we were so impotent against a team that was down a man continues to show that we just aren't playing the right way yet.
No, I was joking about the Frank 'potato' Yallop comment. I am fine with a team built around offense and outscoring the other team. I would much rather see the Fire reign victorious 4-3 than grind out a dull 1-0 win. Give me that any day. However, the Fire may have the personnel for that type of play, but not the coach. It is clear that, after 3 years, Paunovic has no clue how to play to the team's strengths and to play attacking, offensive soccer. His great "success" winning the kiddie (U-20) World Cup was by taking a bunch of children and grinding out games. If he has learned something and we will play to our strengths and out score the other to win, I will gladly give him props.
Not just us, the entire league. Because they are going to have to make up some kind of new rule to let LA have 4 DP's or not count one of their DP's.
Is there anything going on regarding anyone? I keep seeing teams like TFC, Orlando and the Timbers still connected to a lot of people. Anything for even after the season starts?
We have 24 players on the roster, but 11 our internationals. I believe we are allowed 8 (we traded for one, so 9), that means two will be traded/transferred/loaded/waived and we will be down to 22 players. Hell that might be less than last year, where NRod admitted that was on him. How does this asshole still have a job?
I feel the same way. Do we have offers out to anyone? Have any of the Fire media people asked Nelson if his roster is complete? I fear we'll just sign some dopey USL players and call it a day.
Looks like Frankowski is going to get called up for Poland's Euro qualifiers on the 21st and 24th of March, but we have no games during that window so we should be OK.