He went to Darmstadt and was actually good enough to then make the move to a mid to lower tier BL team, but he got home sick and wanted to return back to MLS. I guess Seattle matched what he would be earning in Europe.
Yep. That is the case. Not like I lost track of one of the two players the Fire stupidly let go for no apparent reason (and, yes, I spoke to the Fire FO when it happened and know exactly what happened) and never replaced. That would be the main one.
Hi Fire fans (which I am thinking of becoming myself with the move to Soldier Field)... Thought this might be a good place to post rather than starting a new thread. I'm looking for a Gilberto jersey from his Fire days, a potential gift for a friend (named Gilberto). Ideally small or medium. Shoot me a message and a price if you have one in your closet you'd like to liquidate!
And not a single team would make a move for Collier? Shocking! This list is a who's who of awesomeness: Unprotected Players (11): Diego Campos, Stefan Cleveland, Elliot Collier, Marcelo, Nicolás Gaitán, Cristian Martínez, Amando Moreno, Nemanja Nikolić, David Ousted, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Richard Sánchez Gaitán had better be back or replaced with someone amazing. Campos will be back as a decent squad player. Bastian and Nikolić are gone Collier barely moves the needle Martinez and Moreno can go away now. Marcelo, Ousted, Sanchez will be gone Good for Jalil, maybe he will receive more playing time.
In a Twitter poll, Elliot Collier beat Evan Whitfield for who was the more important Fire player. Also happened: Lovel Palmer beat out Lubos Kubik and Matt Polster destroyed Francis Okaroh by a wiiiiide margin, but Carlos Bocanegra was able to win over Bastian Schweinsteiger.
Well twitter and twitter users can be pretty dumb. Whitfield (one of my least favorite players at the time) played in 103 games (even with missing all of 2002 with an ACL) for some very good Fire teams, including winning 2 US Open Cups, Supporters' Shield and was on the bench for MLS Cup 2003. Collier could not make the roster the last two years. Kubik is an All-time Best XI for the Fire (top-20 defenders all time for the League)...Palmer was not. Polster and Okaroh were about equal in value to the Fire. Okaroh was instrumental in the first season, but not much else. Bocanegra v. Bastian? That is a tough one. Clearly, Bastian was a way better player (not taking anything away from Carlos), but to the Fire it is pretty close. I would agree that Bocanegra (rookie of the year, 2-time defender of the year) was "more important" to the Fire.
If that is the case, then Hauptman and Rodriguez really did cleanse the Fire fan base and Joe is starting from scratch. Evan wasn’t very highly rated on those great Fire teams and he wasn’t that bad in the booth, in my opinion. I didn’t think that Evan was a forgettable player on the Fire.
IMO it just has to do with the fact that not many people followed the Fire back then to ever know anything of him. I don't think we're too many who passionately followed back then. Most people you see on Twitter probably became fans around Blanco at the earliest.
Err..what? I don't think you fully comprehend the turnover in the fanbase. There was a massive influx post Naperville of younger people who were in HS during that. There's a massive thirty something crowd that has been purged over the last decade.
That is just nonsense. Were you even around then? Almost everyone who followed the team could name just about every player out there. Now a days? Not so much.
He was speaking about a Twitter poll where he went up against Collier. Hence why I’m talking about the Twitter Fire fans. Of course the fans who were actually there back then remember him, I mean why wouldn’t they? He wasn’t some unknown like Snitko. But those people are mostly not voting on polls on Twitter. Now if you had him going up against Beasley, then he would beat Collier because that crowd will have heard of him.
That was my point. You said not many Fire fans had heard of Whitfield. That is not true. Perhaps not many Fire "fans" on twitter had. The two groups are not the same.
You're right. I realized I failed to make that distinction clear in my original post, but I was referring to the Twitter Fire crowd when I made that post.
Richard "dirty" Sanchez is officially an ex-Fire player. Sporting Kansas City used the fourth pick to select Sanchez, a former FC Dallas homegrown player who spent the last three seasons with Chicago Fire FC. Sanchez made 25 starts for the Fire in 2018, but will likely be Tim Melia’s backup in 2020. https://www.prosoccerusa.com/mls/four-players-selected-in-mls-re-entry-draft-stage-one/ He had his moments of being decent, he was big and athletic, but man did he make some stupid plays. In 2018, his gaffs cost us a good 8 or so points.
Ex-Fire player Freddie Ljungberg joins the coaching ranks as the interim head coach at Arsenal. Probably won't be named permanently.