Fire ‘committed’ to Soldier Field, looking to make it work at lakefront venue - Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)
This is the one thing Joe has been right about for me. Sure he bungled the logo, and our team sucks, and he’s probably sticking with the coach too long, and the thing with Hanson Stadium for the training grounds could’ve been handled more smoothly, but I’m glad he least has the team in the city again, where they belong. Good to see he’s planning to stay for a bit.
Joe inherited Nelson and trusted him too long. That’s about my biggest complaint. But he fixed it already so no sense in arguing about it further. As for the technical side, I am worried about Heitz, but wouldn’t change him without good reason. If Atlanta drops Bocanegra, you get him at all costs. I certainly wouldn’t change out Heitz for another candidate without MLS experience. Is Soldier Field good? No, but the pandemic screwed up a lot of things. No matter what, it was going to take time to make Soldier Field OK for the Fire. In some ways it’s a step back, in other ways a step forward. Overall it is progress though. The training facility is the next big concern. That investment is more crucial than the home stadium.
What has Boca proven? It's easy to build a team from scratch with no bad cap money and Tata Martino pulling the strings. Almost every move since Tata left has been a bust. Consider Boca, but not at all costs. There's only one man in MLS worthy of getting at all costs and then give him a broom and power washer.
I try and think of the club as a whole, not just my own personal experience. For the club as a whole, in the city has got to be seen as better than Toyota Park. And I love Toyota Park and believe we could have done more to be successful there.
There are a lot of reasons. The market is larger and more accessible. The mind share is greater. Downtown/the Museum Campus/Soldier Field are more a known quantity than Bridgeview. Corporate sales will be easier. Efforts like the “Burnham Downs” are more successful. Divvy and the CTA now help. It’s harder to sign big name players to Salt Lake or KC than it is in NY or LA. The same goes for Bridgeview and Chicago. But that goes for players and staff of all caliber. It was not easy to recruit and retain great staff that had to commute to Bridgeview five days a week, not including game days. There are plenty of downsides. I talk about them as well. But 5 more years at Toyota Park without some serious refurbishment would have decreased the game day value even more. The millions needed to improve the facility might never have made a return on investment. The neglect was no longer superficial. Those millions should go into a new stadium.
Two things: 1) Seat Geek was showing wear and tear and was starting to look run down. 2) Mansueto is big on public architecture. He invested in the Wrigley Building & the Waldorf-Astoria as city icons that he wanted to preserve. Few arenas in the world have the setting of Soldier Field. While control of a built to order stadium helps the bottom line that lakefront setting and skyline backdrop may mean more to him. It was hard enough for him to get land for the practice facility'. I believe in his mind, he's ok with Soldier Field for the near future.
The team belongs in the city. Staying in Soldier Field is monumentally stupid. The Fire will *never* have a fair shot at the revenue that happens there.....we'll be the same thing we've always been, little orphan Oliver holding up our bowl saying "please, sir, may I have some more?" and getting told to pound sand over and over again. Football stadiums are too damned narrow, they make for completely shit soccer. We need to get the hell out as fast as we can.
The search for land will take a while. And if the Bears move, there is talk of Mansueto taking Soldier Field back to a better state.
Soldier field is already completely controlled by rent seekers. It doesn't matter if the Bears are there or not, all the revenue streams are going to stay with the folks that currently have them. The only way the Fire are going to have a home that isn't financial punishment is to be elsewhere. The leech system in place at Soldier Field is predicated on money streams that come from 60k in attendance, which we will not hit in our lifetimes....thus the leeches will *kill* whatever they are feeding on.
Let’s touch base in a year. Let the Fire get the training facility out of the way and then we can focus on stadium issues.
Time isn't going to magically transform SF into someplace reasonable for the Fire to play in. There are no infinity stones, there is no T.A.R.D.I.S.. It cannot transform into someplace appropriate for the Fire to play in. The *only* thing SF has going for it as far as the Fire are concerned is "it's in the city". So are 230+ other square miles of space. There is plenty of that space that can 1) be gotten, 2) made into something far more suitable for the team/soccer, and 3) be reasonably located. Moving to Bridgeview happened because we had ownership that did not want to put any of their own money into the stadium. If we have an owner that is willing to put their own money in, we can only be *thankful* about that if they put the money into things in ways that are not complete flushes of that money down the toilet. None of that changes in a year. None of that changes in *decades*. That shit is just reality. Good owners need to not pretend reality doesn't affect them.