Two months until the season starts and the Fire have a rookie coach, half a roster and not much else. So, is the Fire folding or what? Has Hauptman finally reached his target valuation and he's just going to liquidate the remaining assets? If not, is this just a trial year before the league decides whether or not to fold the team? SHOULD the Fire fold? What say you?
This is a coincidence. I was just going to post a theory that Andy is cutting costs to take the team to St. Louis. STL is going to lose the Rams and a MLS team would be perfect for the town. Chicago goes on hiatus cause the well is poisoned. A new team is brought in a new expansion. Andy gets a another big expansion payoff and is out of Chicago. Expansion fee in Chicago > than StL.
More and more I am beginning to fear that this may be the end of the Fire. Even if all of this is part of a plan to sell to a committed, competent owner, the Fire identity may be so poisoned that the new owner may feel the need to re-brand. And if it's not part of a sale, that just means the dysfunction that has plagued this team is reaching critical mass. The Fire are not the Blackhawks with decades of establishment within the community. If the Fire continue on this path for the foreseeable future, someone (Hauptman, new owner, the league) will have to put it out of its misery. Don't get me wrong, Chicago will have an MLS team. Even if the Fire fold, there will be an expansion team to replace it immediately just like LAFC. But the Fire as a club identity may be on life support.
December 11, 2013 Tristan Bowen Chivas USA Seattle Sounders FC Trade[10] December 12, 2013 Jorge Villafaña Chivas USA Portland Timbers Trade[13] February 3, 2014 Gabriel Farfan Chivas USA Chiapas Loan[72] May 8, 2014 Luke Moore Chivas USA Colorado Rapids Trade[157] July 1, 2014 Carlos Alvarez Chivas USA Colorado Rapids Trade[175] NRod was hired Feb 2014.
I don't think Fire will contract like Chivas...The name isn't tied to the owner in the same way, not is the club (as far as we are aware) in the midst of any legal issues like Chivas was (being sued for racist hiring practices)
To me the Fire died a while ago. What's left is something that I have no interest for, no desire for, no passion for, no tradition for and no honor for. I'll always have the Pre-Hauptman memories and will cherish those forever.
No, of course not. Let's hope so. That is true Optimism. It is incredibly short sighted of Hauptman to do what he has done (ruin the team, cut all expenses, and then sell) as he undervalues his investment. Better to invest a bit, become successful and then maximize profit. However, if you look at this as an investment, he has spent virtually no money on the team. He has been very shrewd in how he has utilized the league's money and our money. He has maintained the attendance (which has always been 15,000-17,000), while basking in the windfalls of Seattle, LA, NYCFC, etc. However, as much as we all make fun of Andrew Hauptman, he is a highly educated and very bright man. My guess is that, when he bought the team, he thought that running the team would be pretty easy. He spoke at first about it being the "legacy" for his kids. I really think he wanted to be a successful team owner and wanted to be in for the long haul (even though his business sense, as a vulture capitalist) revolves around short time gains). He renewed Blanco's contract, we went to two straight Conference Championships. We were second in the East, fifth overal, had the league's second biggest star in Blanco. And then, in 2010, it unraveled. Blanco was gone. De La Cobos was a failure. 2010 was a disaster of a season...setting the table for the disasters to follow. Hauptman realized this was not easy and he began to rethink being an MLS owner. The problem was MLS was in full blown expansion mode. His "investment" (as it is now purely an investment) was about to skyrocket. Hauptman decided at that point (my guess, either July, 2010-selling Justin Mapp to Philadelphia for no reason other than allocation money or May, 2011-firing of CDLC) to ride it out and maximize his investment. Seattle had just come in and set the league ablaze (since Seattle invented MLS, of course). Philadelphia had just started in 2010. Portland and Vancouver coming in 2011. Montreal in 2012. Dumped the drain that was Chivas in 2014. Rumblings about NY and Orlando, which arrived in 2015. The new TV deal signed for 2015. Atlanta will be 2017 and LA2 in 2018. I doubt Atlanta will make that much of a splash and, well, they have already received the money for LA2. Now is the maximum value the Fire will have had ever and, probably, in the next five years or so (until Beckham United hit the scenes, if they do). He has made no efforts in the past three years to make me think otherwise. He has flirted with a couple of big names, but nothing came to fruition. The 2014 field debacle. Cutting everywhere possible. The soccer dome as a stand alone, profit making venture. Cheap, cheap, cheap coaching. Barely passable players. Asset stripping. Taking every free be possible from the league (TAM, Allocation money, possibly a GM) Saving money in every conceivable way. We have cut every mid level player (Magee, Larentowicz, Nyarko, Adailton, Cocis, Palmer-every player making between $100,000 and DP money) except Sean Johnson. All as ways to maximum his current investment. No use "wasting" money on buying players. He is in full vulture capitalist mode now. I really think he is looking to cash out in 2016 or 2017. At least I hope so. No, there is absolutely no reason for the Fire to fold. A competent owner, a commitment to winning, an outreach to the fans and we will all come back.
Yes, that has been discussed extensively. The agreement is with MLS and any MLS team in the Chicago area must play at Toyota Park. Yes and no. There are default provisions (Section 13 of the Operating Agreement), but MLS and the Fire cannot terminate if the Village is "diligently pursuing" its options. If the Village fails to bring things up to par after a year, MLS and the Fire can terminate. There are also self-help remedies, like when the field was so bad, the Fire could have replaced the whole thing and billed the Village or abated. The exception is if the stadium is so bad that it "makes it physically or financially unfeasible the Team to play the Fire home games at the Stadium" it may find an alternative location. My suspicion is that is a very, very high burden.
The thing is with the Fire they seem to refine the meaning of all time low. How low will they go? Has "rock bottom" been hit?
I don't really know what Hauptman's intentions are, but I do know that he shares the belief of the majority of MLS owners and major stakeholders that professional men's soccer in the US is a sure-thing, inevitable money machine and basically all they have to do is roll the ball out. I happen to not believe they're right, but regardless, at some point the other owners are going to get sick of Andy not pulling the rope.
Well, that's a skill in its own right, I guess. As @Chris M. stated in another thread, we are not even close to rock bottom. We have a ways to fall.