Official 2022 Pessimist Thread

I have avoided a Pessimism Thread until the entire team was up and running. Let's see in four weeks, with Kasper back and Torres/Mueller integrated into the starting line up.

That being said, in the spirit of Pessimism, here goes:

After the first third of the season, it sure has not looked good so far. We are bottom in the East and not only do we not win, we barely score goals (8 goals in 11 games, with 3 of those in one game).

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the team. We signed a bunch of players, but I do not see how they fit together.

We dumped 5 our top 6 scorers from last year (Beric, Luka, Medran, Aliseda, Frankowski) and the "replacements" have not done much.

We did have holes in defense that were partially filled. Defense has been okay, but not stellar. Slonina is good, but just a kid.

The attack has been worse than anemic, it has been comatose. Even adding a world class player like Shaqiri has done little to spur the moribund attack. No wing play, four goals total from our three "strikers" so far.

I do see a pattern in our signings- young, inexperienced players with potential (Duran, Offor, the home grown kids, Ivanov) or overpaying for veterans when the kids do not pay off.

I have not seen a single thing from Ezra Hendrickson to provide any reassurance that he has a plan in place.

How is that for Pessimism?

Now, again, let's see in a month after the team has time to play together.

 

A big reason why I switched my college path from journalism to film is because I started thinking about how draining covering the Fire is. And even now, the conversations my dad and I have at the dinner table are usually around the Fire and it's gotten to a point where there's just nothing left that I want to say or hear about the team until they do anything different than they have for the past decade. I didn't want to go to the Fire II game because I was just tired of the team. I'm still watching, I still care, I still want to do my podcast and comment on the club; but it's just exhausting to deal with this team.

 

Where is the option for "Because stupid happens" in the poll?

 

I’m trying to remember the times in the past decade when I wore my Fire jersey into an opposing stadium with confidence and pride in the colors. Not hopeful for a result, or enjoyment of the experience, but real confidence, bordering on pity for the other team. I could only come up with one since 2009, when I went to an away match at Orlando in 2017. It wasn’t a great game, 0-0 I think, but that’s all I got for a decades worth of memories.

 

I thought the Pessimism was just tagged at the forum level, not individual thread level.

 

I'm not an Eeyore, but this is getting ridiculous. We're cursed, man.

 

To use a film analogy, watching the Fire is like going to watch a movie because it's so bad that it's good.

You have to learn to enjoy the suck. I literally laughed out loud when they gave away the second goal against Cincinnati. After the Fire scored I thought, "Could it be?" They then proceed to get scored on again, "Of course not, you idiot," I ruminated to myself chuckling.

I just don't understand why we can't sign some proven journeymen MLS players instead of these players who haven't even proven themselves in lesser leagues. I get gambling on diamonds in the rough but to not have any serviceable MLS calibre forwards is inexcusable.

 

I've used a similar analogy in the opposite direction to describe one of my favorite manga of all time: Domestic na Kanojo (Domestic Girlfriend).

The story comes in incredibly hot right at the beginning so hard that it concusses you. And by the time you've come to your senses, someone already lit a dumpster fire in front of you. But at the same time, there's something compelling inside of it that makes you just want to see where it goes. And at some point, despite your best efforts to read solely from a critical viewpoint, you become attached to the characters. And now that is what drives you, because the core of the manga is the characters. But once you get to that point, the plot starts going wonky again. All these characters you've grown to actually care about just start having inexplicably stupid scenarios thrown at them. The whole thing is an incredible roller coaster ride, not because of the direction of the narrative, but because of the wildly changing quality of the narrative. It means you can't let go during the bad moments because you don't know when the next point the author's gonna finally come to her senses will be.

This sort of thing falls in line with what the Fire have done for almost every season recently. We go into it and somehow even with no expectations, something happens right at the start where we are absolutely thrown back in confusion. And by the time we recover from that confusion, it's already downhill. But, we stick around and start to develop an interest in the individual characters (this season, it's guys like Ezra, Czichos, Gaga, Omsberg). We build a connection to the point where we can clearly see where the flaws are and where they can be better if they just had a bit of help in one way or another, but the plot itself throws so many curveballs that they can never get a real footing and we can't either. It's maddening and exhilarating at the same time to watch because we know that, on paper, this is a good team. We see flashes of what a good team can be and what this team can be if only they stuck to what they should be doing. And instead, we just keep seeing consistent failure.

The ending of DomeKano is incredibly hated by the fanbase as the final 10 chapters was a series of the weirdest ex machinas and out of character decisions made by the leads, slapped together with the weirdest pacing and following one of the slowest stretches of the manga where it seemed like things were finally getting wrapped up. It all looked set to be a decent ending until it was suddenly yanked away to end in an almost 180. I respect the author's decision because it's what she wanted to do. But, we see that same sort of thing happen with the Fire year after year as they approach a "playoff race" that either completely falls apart early on or somehow comes down to the wire despite all logic and reason. And for the Fire, it's less forgivable, but it follows the same reason: Clearly, it seems like it's just what they wanted to do. And, much like the readers of DomeKano awaiting the next work by Kei Sasuga, we eagerly await the next train wreck of a Fire season.

 

I think that would make more sense if I knew what a manga is. What the ******** is a manga?

 

It's a comic book, but Japanese. No color, it's serialized chapter by chapter in a magazine of other stories instead of just being released in collected volumes. The magazine gets released either weekly or monthly depending on the title.
It truly adds to the effect of being like the Fire because you got a game every week that you just sorta wait for, hoping that it'll get better. And then the new chapter comes out and you're reminded that it's actually not good.

 

This. It’s very clear Heitz is US-phobic unless they’re homegrown and it isn’t working.

 

Is the use of homegrown players strategic or out of necessity given budget mismanagement? I’m honestly not sure.

 

Relying on homegrown players is a recipe for failure. Any individual player as a mid-teenager is way too speculative to be relied upon for success. It requires volume, with 1 or 2 actually sticking. Perhaps with the new Chicago Fire 2, that will be a recipe for success in the future.

As for being US-phobic, I am going to expand that to US and MLS-based players, but even that expanded definition does not help.

He did shell out relatively big bucks for Kascper an MLS "product" and just signed Mueller, US player and former MLS product. He signed a couple of other MLS guys (Richey and Omsberg), as well.

Beyond that? It seems your presumption holds.

He has also let a few US/MLS "products" go over the years who still had value to the Fire:
Dax
Sapong
Mihailovic
Shuttleworth
Edwards
Calvo
Plus lesser players (Bronico, Connor, Collier, Gutjahr, Lillard, etc.) but that happens in every team, every year

I would say he certainly favors non-US/MLS players.

Perhaps it just because he lacks the "near encyclopedic knowledge" of MLS salary rules, like his predecessor.

 

I’m in the same boat as you.

 

Can I say that Johnnie's Beef has always been a bit overrated?
I know they are consistently voted best (or near best), and they are good, but not that good.
Also, their Italian Sausage has a tendency to be dry.

 

Thank you........you can go back to ball sucking now.

 

"US-phobic"?
So, like Nelson 'shady' Rodriguez, Heitz has stayed "home" to work?

Perhaps it is the 7 hour time difference that is throwing him.

 

What? You think he had to temporarily put them down to make this fix?
The man can multitask, you know.
He was just fixing a poll, not painting the Sistine Chapel

Of course, Michelangelo was pretty good at multitasking, as well.
He did the Tomb of Julius II and the Sistine Chapel at the same time.

 

Probably all while mastering the art of ball sucking.

 

"Zen and the art of...."

 

I think this is true. I mean, of the US players he has signed, all but one (I think) also played outside of MLS thus "proving" themselves in Heitz' mind. Bornstein played in Mexico and Mueller in Scotland (Richey played in Canada. Omsberg seems to be the exception to the rule but there are so few US non-homegrowns on the roster that it's pretty easy to point this flaw out in Heitz' roster construction without going to these lengths.