Your memory serves, but not quite. Shaqiri was only at Lyon for six months, not two years. He signed with Lyon in July, 2021 and joined the Fire in February, 2022. He played 11 matches for Lyon, starting 9 (and scoring 2 goals). We paid Lyon just about what Lyon had paid Liverpool, possibly a tad more. Transfermarkt and Goal.com state that Lyon paid 6 million Euro, we paid 7 million. Wikipedia states we paid 6.5 million Euro for rhim. You are absolutely correct about Torres. Kacper is a puzzler. The combination of Kacper and Gutierrez and Shaqiri (and Duran) should have "clicked," but it clearly did not. That one still bothers me. .
That article is hysterical. It is clearly a poorly translated fan fic article or something. It also is not particularly complimentary of Torres, just a rehash of his Wikipedia page, including using his first name "Ian"!
Y’all google for the articles then…I just picked one from the results that was not CFFC, MLS or HTIOT. I stand by my original statement, when Shaq, Jairo and Kacper were signed they all ‘looked good’. No one was espousing ‘what a horrible signing’…
Jairo was definitely a big prospect in Mexico. I don’t follow their league but I have friends that do and there was universal praise and lots of talk about him being seen as having pretty huge potential. Anecdotal, yes. But as I said, I don’t follow the Mexican league anymore.
Part of the player evaluation process is assessing how well the player will perform as part of his new team, as opposed to how he did at his old team. Not saying it is easy, but it is an important part ( See: Shaqiri vs Swiss Nats, Jairo, Kacper,etc)
i think the Jairo signing was fine -- high risk, high reward and bad injury luck when he got hurt after he signed
I agree with your original statement. It's just the article does not state what you seem to claim it states.
There is usually a “story” behind every acquisition and a “reason” when they go bad. I accept that for any one player but this is not sufficient when most of the major acquisitions go bad.
if you went to the twitter and reddit reactions for the former fanbases for kacper, arnaud, and acosta, you saw a lot of folks glad they were leaving not so for jairo
Of course the peanut gallery is negative… Kacper had led the Union in scoring the season before and Heitz had been receiving flak for not signing any MLS experience. All liked that signing. Arnoud was billed as ‘an experienced top French league defender’ and an upgrade over Sekulic. And Acosta was billed as ‘the best available MLS free agent’…’the prize FA of the off season’.
We all have selective memories. Ultimately, results are what matter. There were concerns about Kacper’s effectiveness in a single striker system and comments about the large number of opportunities he was provided by the Union. I remember not being impressed by Souquet and a number of others said immediately he was no better than Sekulic. I thought Acosta would perform better than he has so far. Many experts also liked him. He may perform better once things settle down a little. Hope. All this shows how important “beneath the surface” work is and how difficult the whole process is.
right, which is part of what I think was Heitz's problem: he picks the things that seem good on paper -- often without concern with how they match his head coach's play style -- but they miss way more than they hit the Kacper signing felt like a move that said "everyone wants a guy with MLS stats, so let me pick this guy" -- similarly so with Acosta who cares what they were "billed" as by some unnamed "they" -- the "peanut gallery" for these teams were the ones that watched these guys play every week and they were pretty correct on all three of the names I listed: they're all mediocre to bad the so called "peanut gallery" around here wanted Jairo to leave and Kacper to leave and Guti to get more playing time and Barlow to never see the field and so on
"right, which is part of what I think was Heitz's problem: he picks the things that seem good on paper -- often without concern with how they match his head coach's play style -- but they miss way more than they hit" This is my concern. To have a GM/TD (or whatever) and the coaching staff actually on the same page.
While I don't disagree on the starting position, using it as an excuse for where we are now is disingenuous, especially since "culture" and "community" are both *visible* metrics that there are reasonable arguments that almost nothing has happened there....*five* years later. It doesn't take *years* to correct all of these things. All it takes is 1) the will and 2) a plan. Hell, deciding we *were* starting over and *everything and everyone* goes and starting from scratch is not even guaranteeing one bad year (as we're all fans of the club that won the league in it's expansion year). These people are adults and professionals. They have agency and responsibility and they have *failed consistently*. Quit treating them like they're handicapped and need excuses made for them.
reddit doing an AMA with the...chief marketing officer team never sends out anyone associated with the soccer side of thing to face any scrutiny at all -- closest I could find in the last few years was Eddie Rock attending a supporters town hall event did heitz do a single media appearance without canned questions in his entire tenure?
Can you source one instance from ANYONE around here even implying Heitz should continue to pick players? How about anyone, anywhere? I was speaking of the culture and community of the staff, players and FO. Supporters are responsible for the good of the greater community and they really suck at it right now, that’s very true. People seem to think Heitz’s role (I don’t event remember the title because it’s irrelevant) was analogous to an NFL GM. That’s a huge misnomer that people can’t seem to let go of. I don’t care if he never spoke to the press but it’s Joe’s biggest failure that no one speaks to the press and is accountable to the public.
I get rounding numbers and such, but as a community here we should probably set a realistic baseline for this. Heitz was signed in December of 2019 so it’s basically been three and a half years, with one and a half of those being on covid lockdown. I know it FEELS like two decades, but if we can’t agree on the timeline the rest because increasingly difficult to discuss.
People seem to think Heitz’s role (I don’t even remember the title because it’s irrelevant) was analogous to an NFL GM and that’s a huge misnomer. We lack a President and it is Joe’s biggest failure. We don’t want the technical lead talking to the press. It’s a waste of that person’s time and not their skillset. Besides, I don’t think English was even his second language. Let the technical staff do the technical things. Hire a president to take all the arrows and pass on all the credit.
why would soccer be exempt from having the head team personnel guy (call them the TD or GM or whatever) speak to the press? Bears have President Kevin Warren who is the guy that speaks about the stadium move and public financing, etc. Poles speaks about player personnel, roster moves, draft picks, etc. who should be the person fulfilling the Poles role for the Fire if not the Sporting Director?
If Heitz did not want to or was incapable of performing the job duties, he should not have accepted the position