Chicago Fire provide end-of-summer treat

Late-season push, potential playoff berth — it's a beautiful game

September 08, 2011|John Kass
  • Chicago Fire Technical Director Frank Klopas, center, helped stabilize the team after taking over as coach recently.
Chicago Fire Technical Director Frank Klopas, center, helped stabilize the team after taking over as coach recently. (Alex Garcia, Chicago Tribune)

Out at Toyota Park there was something nice under that blue sky and sunshine: The Chicago Fire working hard on the practice field.

Yes, it's soccer. Sometimes readers tell me they need a break from politics, and guess what? Writers need a break from politics too.

Every day can't be crooks, scoundrels, liars and scheming Republican and Democratic bosses, not to mention all those candies and nuts.

So it was a treat for me Wednesday to stand so close to a practice, to enjoy something devoid of political spin. Instead, this was honest.

It was the fluid geometry of soccer moving back and forth on the grass.

Perhaps you've seen them, the triangles formed by players and their feet, and the ball flows left and then right, and triangles breaking off and reforming, as you hear players call for the ball.

There was veteran Logan Pause, who is looking to stay with the club when his playing days are over. Another was Mexican international player Pavel Pardo — who told me after practice that he loves Chicago and is crazy about our almond croissants.

And there were the two Ghanaian strikers, Patrick Nyarko and Dominic Oduro, who speak the Twi language to each other during games so the other teams don't understand.

It was beautiful the way they moved, shouting and flicking that ball, sometimes off the outside of the foot, sometimes with the heel. Though they're paid to play and they're almost at the end of a long and tortuous season, you could hear something as they worked.

It was laughter. It was the sound of a team enjoying its hard work.

If you're a summer sports fan, Chicago is a place dry and parched, with road kill on the edge of the baseball highway, and there's been no laughter in it. The Cubs have collapsed, miserably, as they do every year, primarily from lack of talent. And my White Sox have collapsed too, not from lack of talent, but instead from an infection: They became ill with a strange, devastating contagion called Ozzie-Kenny Ego-itis.

The Fire could have collapsed too. For weeks it seemed they couldn't score. And so they set a withering, infuriating league record of 15 ties in one season. All that effort, all those ties, those of us in the stands kept waiting for them to crack up.

But they didn't. Chicago soccer legend Frank Klopas, the Fire's technical director (general manager), wouldn't let them. He took over as coach and stabilized the team, and now they're on a three-game winning streak.

It's not much, but somehow they're still alive for a possible playoff spot. And they're in the final of the U.S. Open Cup against Seattle on Oct. 4.

Will they do it? I don't know. But it's been fascinating to watch.

"I believe in these players," Klopas told me. "We've had a lot of new players this year. And they needed some time to get together. But the attitude is what saved us. You can see the attitude yourself. You take pride on the field, for yourself, for the colors you put on."

As I watched the Fire in a possession drill, under that clean southwest suburban sky, the view was so special that I called a friend who loves sports.

He's a famous Chicago sports broadcaster, and I invited him to drive southwest to see something especially fine: soccer in the sun.

"Soccer?" asked WGN and Comcast host Dave Kaplan. "You want me to watch soccer? OK, I might just do that, if you get me a couple pots of COFFEE and some NO-DOZE so I DON'T START SNORING AND STAY THE (BLEEP) AWAKE!"

Kaplan is a good man, and so I won't abandon him to his demons, because I know that someday Frank Klopas will lead the Fire to the championship, and just before they win it all, my friend Kaplan will get it.

And he'll turn to me with tears welling in his eyes, saying, "Dude, why didn't you tell me earlier that soccer was so good?"

And Kap? I just can't wait for that day. I'm just saying.

In the meantime, the Fire are fighting like cats to try to catch New York and get into the playoffs. And one of the reasons is newcomer Pardo.

The two-time World Cup player from Mexico had just moved to Lincoln Park when we met earlier in the summer.

Then we were at the Greek Islands restaurant with Klopas, and Pardo was insisting on having a waiter read his coffee grounds to tell his fortune. Naturally, the fortune was excellent.

"What a city," said Pardo. "I love Chicago. And I finally found a really good place to get a croissant. It's really good. Not in Lincoln Park, but near Walton. It's got Belgian bread, and good coffee and the almond croissants, very, very tasty."

Pavel, you don't eat pastries. You're joking about the almond croissants, right?

"Me? Joke?"

Where is the place?

"You're the reporter," he said. "You find it."

He knows that as a fat guy, I don't need pastries.

But what I do need is the Fire winning a few more games and catching New York.

Go Fire.