Peter Wilt named "Naperville Person of the Year"

Was this article in the Jan. 3 Daily Herald?

 

Has he also been named New England Person of the Year? New Jersey Person of the Year? DC Person of the Year? Peter Wilt's latest accomplishments: Landing us in a sandbox with insufficient everything, losing our coach, giving away our captain. Naperville can have him.

 

And building a team that won an MLS Cup, got to another final, won two Open Cups, and was quite frankly the best soccer to watching in MLS for 5 years, while being probably the most fan-friendly GM in MLS, and being put over a barrel repeatedly by Soldier Field and Chicago in general, still finding a place to play for a team that very well could be in Des Moines or Rochester.

Make sense next time, will you?

 

Which option would you have preferred, losing Armas or Nowak? And before you toss off a snap answer based on the simple basis of being a fan, think about it from a management point of view as well as what is better for the team two years from now.

Don't blame PW for this, he's the guy who had to make that call to Nowak, he's had it rougher than anyone else about any of this.

 

Rougher than Nowak?

I don't dispute the Fire's accomplishments in the first three or four seasons, or that PW hasn't worked very hard for this team. Sorry if I've hurt everybody's feelings, but it does seem our team has been getting seriously shafted lately. Sure, a number of our problems aren't due directly to managment. MLS has silly rules that it applies arbitrarily--well, not entirely arbitrarily, since their goal seems to be to build a winner (and a stadium) in New Jersey. And the injury situation was just ridiculous last year, but recent events seem to indicate that our team has lost control of itself. We've lost our coach and captain and gotten nothing for it.

Read the article posted on this thread, and see if you agree that it's thesis is that PW has rolled over for Naperville, and that's why they love him. It's not about what he's done, it's about what Naperville has gotten, or rather, what it hasn't had to sacrifice. Horray for PW, because our flowers haven't been trampled, our parking spaces aren't taken, and those nasty soccer fans aren't swearing or drinking. The underlying assumption in that article is that having a soccer team in your community is a bad thing, and that Fire management is so delightful because it appeases people who are not fans of the Fire.

While I realize that this PR is necessary, the Fire's recent policy is one of looking out for anyone but the Fire.

Tacticly, getting a new captain to go with a new coach is a fine plan, and if we get Joe Max or Ernie or someone to wear #10, maybe this will all work out. At that point, I'll be happy to write a retraction.

 

Hattrix,

Go cheer for DC

 

Nowak still gets paid to play soccer, it might not be where he wants to do it, but he still gets paid ten times more per year than someone who teaches your kids to read. He is paid incredibly good money to play a game and do what he loves for a living. I love what I do for a living, but if someone offered me over $150,000 a year to do it I'd be in hog heaven. But enough about that.

Yes we've gotten shafted, but when hasn't anyone that's not LA or NY gotten shafted? As much as I hate Dallas, they seem to have gotten a nice whopping amount of stick lately. And how about DC? They lose Pope and two others for Petke. And has anyone ever heard of Colorado geting anything?

And as for a Naperville article that says PW did their bidding, so what. I'm glad he did, it let the Fire play somewhere, and I'd rather have that than dropping them. He didn't let their paranoia get in the way and they seem to be acknowledging that as well.

You seem to want the Fire to be the top of the league again in a quick fix that will take care of everything simply by dropping in JMM or Earnie and that goes against what I've always admired about the Fire, that it thinks long term, that Bradley didn't just create a team year one that was at the final, but one that still had eight of those same players playing in a MLS Cup two years later. I've been in NY for two years now and watched that team's revolving door of players come and go and been glad that the Fire has never been like that. I hate to say it, but I don't think that Dave is going to be at the top of the table this year, it's a rebuilding year worse than I would have ever even imagined, but they'll at least make the playoffs and likely second round, which is more than Hudson was able to do.

 

And technically, where they have gotten some favors, I think LA's being forced to give up Mathis to get Luis Hernandez classifies as a shaft.

 

Nowak is 38, right? So he was older than Jo-Max is now back when the Fire started. I'm not thinking of a transplanted #10 as just a quick fix. It's a temporary thing for two or three years until someone like Mapp or Capano or Gray can handle it.

But look around the league at who wears number ten: Nowak, El Pibe, El Diablo, El Mauricio, EL APC, and El Foreign Guy, to name a few. It doesn't seem that too many Americans get that job. I think a silver lining in this deal is that it gives us an opportunity to be one of the few teams that will have a homegrown A-mid. (So just pretend I didn't mention Stewart.)

 

No it doesn't. Or at least only after a huge swig from a bottle of "Hindsight 20/20".

Mathis was picking splinters out of his ass from sitting unused on LA's bench whereas El Stompador was supposed to be this great Goalscorer Supreme. At the time, it was a gift to LA. It just so happened to have backfired when El Barbiedoll decided that MLS was vacation time to pull college girls and Mathis seized his chance to play and made the most of it. That still doesn't negate the INTENT of the trade which was to gift LA another Mexican "superstriker".

Anyway, LA fans can look at us now and know where they'll probably be in two years as the league takes them apart, especially if the Metrostars haven't won the Cup yet by then.

 

Joe-Max is not the same type of player as Nowak. I like him a lot, but don't expect him to be able to play the position the way that Peter did, or even passably.

 

Congrats to Peter. Certainly did some fine work in convincing the city of Naperville that the Fire would/could be good guests and made the best of an opportunity.