We’re losing a good person that has done a lot of good at the organization. If we’re lucky we’ll find someone with as good a character who can only focus on the on field results and we see improvement there. I fear we’ll get another Dave Baldwin who I feel doesn’t have any interest with a long term connection to the city or club.
I have heard Heitz contributed to progress by the Fire in a number of areas- Academy, scouting organization, Training facility and others. To the extent that he was a positive influence in these areas, he should be praised. ( I am not in a position to judge how much he contributed.) I hope he finds a new job that uses his skillset and one that he enjoys.
can't comment on whether or not he was a good dude, especially since I don't remember him ever speaking to the press but he was bad at the most important part of his job
He's still going to be involved with Lugano, so it's not like he's out of work. I don't want to kick the guy on his way out, but he overstayed any good will by two years. It's long been time for him to go. Thanks for setting up the scouting network. I'm sure he's not the only person who could have done that.
If I had to guess (and a GUESS would be exactly that because I have no sources with direct knowledge) Joe seemed to be relying on him to get much of the behind the scenes stuff taken care of as his primary task. Setting up Chicago Fire II, setting up a scouting network, getting the training center off the paper planning stages and into an actual physical structure. He's done those things in conjunction with Paul Cadwell so for sure he deserves praise for that. If he could have signed some winning teams along the way that'd been a bonus but he did not. I just think finding someone who can build a winner in the first team is the way forward now. Someone with knowledge of MLS roster rules and an ability to find value and recruit not only from abroad but especially within MLS free agency. Georg seemed to over pay for the latter and undervalue the former as an option unless he was overpaying for the latter (Przyblko, etc). I've got no personal beef with Georg and I wish him the best of luck but he had some big misses in his time as TD of the first team (Torres, Aliseda, Shaqiri) and some big wins too although they only translated to selling players (Gaga, Duran).
if not heitz, why did the roster lack talent for his entire tenure? even with a great coach the roster's ceiling was like 7th in the East
I've said before that it was his responsibility. There's no denying that. It's just that there are more ways to fix things than someone leaving. I'm just concerned he gets replaced with a piece of garbage if we're not careful. Maybe we were on a ten year plan to success, and that's too long ESPECIALLY for MLS. But I'd rather be on a ten year plan than have Nelson Rodriguez back. Water under the bridge now. Let's go get Arne or Bob and speed things up.
This opinion is only possible if you ignore jobs #1, #2, and #3 they were hired to do. Sorry, no. I break out in hives if I try to be that ignorant.
Based on your lack of understanding expressed here over time, I assume you have no idea what Heitz was hired to do.
You can assume whatever you like, your assumptions and opinions are consistently garbage. *Nobody* at the top of a professional sports team gets to keep their job if their defense is "look, I think I did really well with everything *except* the team, where I am demonstrably worst in the league, consistently, for years".
It’s clear your reading comprehension scores must be very low. Has anyone in the last year said Heitz should continue to be the lead when picking players? Can you source one instance from ANYONE around here even implying this? How about anyone, anywhere? And keep the homophobia for Twitter or Reddit. If you’re not going to be able to read and understand, that’s on you but we don’t really need any casual phobias around here. The internet has enough spaces where that’s accepted and expected behavior and you can plop your garbage there.
perhaps, but why is this such secretive information?? if indeed the Sporting Director has so many important responsibilities beyond assembling a strong roster and coaching staff why do only insiders know this?
Agree. Seems like these important responsibilities (scouting network, MLSNext, training facility, Academy) are expected to help put a better product (team) on the field. So how well is that going? Guess maybe the most important, the overriding need is still the ability to assess and sign players. And he was miserable at this, the most important area.
Who? Club hype and agent baloney? Small group of diehard supporters? I do not recall articles from objective parties praising his acquisition genius.
I know @xtomx has argued something similar before as well, but I say the “club’s” biggest failure has been its lack of consistent, open, community based communication. The club is not just the team on the field of course. The failure on the field is in part tied to this club failure. Joe and Heitz started from a situation that is worse than starting a new team. Everything had to be inspected, torn apart and rebuilt. This from the team on the field, to the technical staff and structure, the front office and the culture and community. It was all a disaster. the fact that this whole process is/was a secret is really bad management on Joe’s part. People might have some patience if they saw growth all over the place. Maybe Heitz would never be a good TD/GM in MLS. Maybe he needed help. Maybe he didn’t want the role if it didn’t include that and he wasn’t good enough at MLS. I’ve no idea. I just know the secrecy fails us all. Luckily all that shit is done. Let’s hope Joe continues to maintain it and the next one to fill the role can focus solely on player acquisition and retention and can simply rely on the foundations that were built. That ability to focus is probably what will make the biggest difference for the role.
True, but in the end he grossly overpaid certain players and gave out contract lengths that were too long. It was likely necessary to get certain players to come here, but the organ-I-zation was hamstrung when it came time to cut bait.
For sure…just like he would have to get M.Reus to come here instead of the Galaxy. google is your friend…there are no negative articles about Shaq, Jairo or Kacper’s signings…until they didn’t perform. But you can find articles about the Fire making positive moves… An example: https://bolavip.com/en/soccer/mls-w...n-the-2022-transfer-window-20220216-0045.html
To me, this always looked like someone that was used to how relatively easy it is to move players in Europe. MLS makes it much more difficult.
If memory serves me, there were people on these boards wondering why we paid more for Shaq to leave Lyon (where he wasn’t playing) than Lyon had paid Liverpool two years prior! We were excited for a fresh start for him and wanted good things, but there were signs this might not work. Unless you’re a scout of Liga MX, no one knew what to expect from Jairo, but since the scouting department (that we are supposed to give Heitz credit for?) said he was the second coming, all we could do was watch and wait…and wait…and wait… Kacper is probably the best example of us all thinking it was a good signing and it ending horribly. The knock on Heitz up to that point was that he overpaid for non-MLS talent to come in and underwhelm. Signing Kacper seemed to show that he was learning to sign players who could hack it here—of course this isn’t to say every player works in every system, so in hindsight you can see him trying, but not understanding what he was building.
Yes, transparency has been one of the major failures of this team. This is a fascinating comment. It is so true, but not something that has been discussed. As an analogy, about an hour ago we had a roofing contractor leave our house after giving us an estimate of having a leak fixed in our ceiling. The shingles look fine and the visible leak appeared minor (it drips 3 or 4 times a year after a very heavy rain). It turns out, we have had a historic build up moisture in our attic that is rotting the house "from the inside out" which has been going on for years, well before we bought the house four years ago. The home inspector reported "moisture" but that was it. As a result, we have soft spots in the sheeting and the trusses are molding (fortunately they are not beginning to rot). The estimate to do the whole job is $102,000-126,000. My partner commented, "How can it be so expensive? We could build a new house for that." Well, they have to remove everything that is rotted, abate the mold, encapsulate and seal, reinsulate and THEN rebuild the roof. All to make it "look" like it currently does! It's similar to what is going with the Fire. When Joe bought the team, it "looked" okay from the outside. Yes, we had sucked most years, but we had some core players and a stadium and a loyal (if shrinking) fan base. Turns out, the Fire had a structure that had rotted from years of misuse by Hauptman and Rodriguez. The entire team system needs to be examined, gutted, and THEN rebuilt. Now, I would argue that it should NOT have taken four years to discover the rot and rebuild, but we do not know how bad it was. We have had glimpses, we have lots of speculation, but we have never been told about it. There are reasons not to say, but it is frustrating. Plus, and this is where many people are angry, we should have been able to rebuild the infrastructure while fielding a competitive team. As it is, and I think this is your point, Heitz has been working on the rebuild and not on fielding a competitive team. That makes sense from a long term perspective, but not explaining the strategy (I almost used "Process" - Trust the Process!) has been incredible detrimental. Then we add things like Dave Baldwin's seemingly myopic vision on the "Messi Match" (which I am sure is NOT his actual myopic vision), at the apparent expense of everything else related to to the Club. Of course, he is working on partnerships, sponsors, etc. but we hear little about them and what efforts he is making to improve the standing of the team in the eyes of the business community. As for the players, we have spent money, but not wisely and not in a cohesive manner. There have seemingly been no efforts to build an actual team. Square pegs in round holes, over and over and over. That is frustrating and is on Heitz and Joe.
While I agree with much of what you said, I do not think secrecy/ communication is the reason we have a sub-standard roster composed of pieces that do not fit well.