Analyzing Heitz’s Four Seasons, Part II: Player Signings

Note: This is the second part of a four part series. If you haven’t already, check out Part I where we put the Fire’s results in the past four years into context.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the team’s high roster spend and generally disappointing results, many of the Fire’s most expensive players have not been producing at a level commensurate with their compensation.

The chart below shows goal contributions (goals plus primary and secondary assists) for all outfield players on the Fire’s roster who had one or more minutes on the pitch with the first team in 2023.

While goal scoring isn’t the primary role of all players – a center back’s primary job is keeping the ball out of one net, not getting it in the other – the ability to score goals is a primary driver of player compensation throughout the sport globally, and successful teams don’t shy away from spending on offensive production.

Big Money, Small Results

Considering the Fire’s anemic offense over the past four years (second-last in the league in total goals for all non-expansion teams after Toronto during that span), it's no shock that the team’s significant roster investment has not resulted in offensive production.

Xherdan Shaqiri, far and away the team’s most expensive player, was one of only three players to make it into double-digit goal contributions, with five goals and five assists last season, but the other two players in that club, Brian Gutiérrez (two goals, nine assists) and Maren Haile-Selassie (six goals, four assists) made a combined $519,804 guaranteed last season, equal to just 6.4% of Shaqiri’s $8,153,000 wages.

Shaqiri is only the most expensive example of the Fire’s wasteful spending at the most expensive part of the roster. Although transfer fees are not public information, The Athletic has compiled transfer fee information alongside the MLSPA-provided salary data to estimate each team’s total spend on Designated Players.

Some teams have a significant outlay on transfer fees, typically indicating that they are signing young players with an eye toward developing them and selling them later for a profit. No team this past season has epitomized this more than Atlanta, who paid a league-leading $21.6 million in transfer fees for their DPs, including a reported $16 million to bring 22-year-old Thiago Almada to the team (the team has reportedly rejected offers for nearly twice that amount, electing instead to keep him in Atlanta at least through this season).

Other teams try to acquire known talent closer to the end of their career, often bringing them in as free agents or without a transfer fee attached. Toronto, for example, offered Lorenzo Insigne $15.4 million per season, making him the highest-paid player in the league on his arrival (since eclipsed by Lionel Messi at Miami), but paid no transfer fees for him or the team’s other DPs, Federico Bernardeschi and Jonathan Osorio.

The Fire, however, are the only team in the league with a bill that reaches into the eight figures for both DP transfer fees and salaries, paying an estimated $13.5 million to bring Xherdan Shaqiri, Jairo Torres, and Ousmane Doumbia to the team, while also promising them $10.2 million in salary per season.

Per The Athletic, that makes the team’s total cash outlay on designated players $23.7 million, good for third in the league behind Atlanta ($27.2 million total) and Miami ($27.3 million total).

All told the $23.7 million the Fire spent on Designated Players netted the team five goals (all from Shaqiri) and eight assists (five from Shaqiri, two from Doumbia, one from Torres), including secondary assists, for a total of 13 goal contributions.

By comparison, Atlanta’s $27.2 million spend – a DP bill just under 15% higher than what the Fire's – gave them players that added 31 goals and 26 assists in 2023, for 57 combined goal contributions.

Spending five-sixths of the money on Designated Players that Atlanta does but getting less than a quarter of the production – and less than one-sixth of the goals – is why The Athletic have said that the Fire have “absolutely the worst money-spent-for-production DP situation in the league,” highlighting Torres’s $6m transfer fee and zero goals and primary assists over the past two seasons.

Perhaps even more damning, Atlanta are widely expected to sell Thiago Almada, who was brought in on a $16 million transfer fee, for twice that sum or more, making their Designated Players effectively “free” long-term. The Fire, meanwhile, have committed roughly $32 million between transfer fees and salaries to bring Shaqiri here for three seasons, with essentially no prospect of redeeming any significant portion of that cost.

Pick A Number From 1-XI, Except #9

Part of the Fire’s lack of overall production is due to roster construction: Despite spending $20.42 million on player salaries in 2023, the fifth-highest sum in the league, only $1.96 million (9.6%) of the total was spent on players classified as forwards that received first team minutes, mostly to Kacper Przybyłko, who was guaranteed $1.2 million but was relegated from starting duties for most of the season.

A full 58.9% of the money the Fire spent on forwards in 2023 went to Przybyłko, who ultimately contributed four goals, tying him with Fabian Herbers for fourth on the team, and added two assists. (It is worth noting – on a per-minute basis of players classified as forwards, Przybyłko was the Fire’s most effective striker, scoring 0.37 goals per 90 minutes, compared to 0.29 for Kei Kamara and 0.27 for Georgios Koutsias)

Przybyłko’s salary is only one part of his budget hit: To bring him here from Philadelphia, the team agreed to spend $1,150,000 in General Allocation Money (GAM) to the Union split across the two seasons. This means that between the money spent bringing him to Chicago and buying down his salary to fit in the cap, he has nearly as much of an impact on the team’s overall salary budget as three Designated Players.

With Shaqiri being largely asked to play as a center attacking midfielder, setting up goal-scoring opportunities for others, the Fire’s inability to replace Jhon Durán at center forward following his $18 million sale to Aston Villa last season has clearly hampered the team’s overall production and results.

The need for a replacement was obvious: The team’s 39 goals in 2022 were second-last in the league to D.C. United’s 36, and Durán's eight goals led the team that year; the team spoke openly that being a position of need and yet the team’s investment in forwards was meager.

Even though salary data from MLS does not include the GAM spent acquiring Przybyłko nor the reported $2.5 million transfer fee spent bringing Koutsias here, the team still spent less on forward salaries than any other position: $1.96 million on forwards (who played with the first team last year), compared to $2.7 on players classified as defenders/midfielders (Ousmane Doumbia, Gastón Giménez and Federico Navarro), and the team also spent substantially on transfer fees bringing those players to the team.

Generally, offensive prowess – and goal scoring specifically – are some of the best-compensated skills in the game due to their relative rarity and absolute importance. Spending is also typically directed to positions of need, and yet the team’s solution to needing an in-prime striker was to sign 38-year-old Kei Kamara and 19-year-old Georgios Koutsias. That averages out to 28 years, about the right age for an in-prime, game-in, game-out starter at the position, but in reality, both Kamara and Koutsias figured to be bench options: Koutsias, pushing to earn minutes as he developed, and Kamara, coming on with fresh legs late to score goals.

Center forward has not been the team’s only position of need over the past several years: At the start of the 2022 season, the team was so thin on the wings that then-Head Coach Ezra Hendrickson enlisted Jonathan Bornstein, nominally a defender, to play on the right wing when Stanislav Ivanov needed to come off. (He scored a goal, but that's largely besides the point.)

The team went on to sign Chris Mueller from Scottish side Hibernian FC towards the end of the 2022 winter window. The move did not include a transfer fee but the Fire needed to pay $500,000 in General Allocation Money (GAM) to his former team Orlando City for his MLS rights, significantly increasing his salary cap hit.

Having players arrive late in windows (thereby having them miss games early in the season and denying them time to gel with the team in preseason), and for intra-MLS deals, at a cost in GAM that is at the absolute top end of fair attached has become a pattern over the past four seasons.

Signings: Hurry Up, Then Wait

When named Sporting Director in December 2019, Georg Heitz inherited a Fire roster that had effectively been cleaned out, with all three Designated Player spots open, a number of homegrown openings, and a hefty pile of allocation money due to the fact that the team had not been spending significant amounts on transfers in the previous windows (and allocation money accumulates for roughly two years before expiring).

With under four months until the team’s regular-season opener at Seattle, Heitz went to work signing a total of 16 players (Álvaro Medrán had been signed shortly before Heitz's arrival and is not included in that tally). Although he said in an interview with The Athletic that “we have to take the right decisions and not the quick decisions. We will take enough time, knowing that in soccer you are always under pressure,” he ultimately elected to fill all three Designated Player spots by bringing in Ignacio Aliseda, Robert Berić, and Gastón Giménez.

Players arrived from far and wide: two of the DPs arrived from Argentina, and Berić arrived from Ligue 1 in France. Luka Stojanovic was brought in from the Serbian SuperLiga, Boris Sekulic arrived from the Polish Ekstraklasa, and Miguel Ángel Navarro came from the Venezuelan Primera División.

Heitz explained his rationale for casting such a wide geographic net with the Tribune shortly after being hired: “It’s my conviction that in every country in this world, you will find good players. Normally I prefer the top player of a small soccer country over a No. 270 of a big soccer country because his mentality will be different. He will come with self-confidence.”

The team also signed a record number of homegrown players in the 2020 winter window, including Chris Brady, Brian Gutiérrez, and Mauricio Pineda.

The chart below compares the Fire’s signings in each transfer window under Georg Heitz and compares them to signings by every other team in the league from 2021 onwards (league-wide data from the 2020 season was not readily available). For the purposes of scale, the winter window from expansion teams (e.g. St. Louis’s window prior to the start of the 2023 season) are not included.

Heitz’s winter 2020 tally of 16 signings is close to the most made by an existing team over the past three seasons: Only Inter Miami in the winter of 2022 signed more players (with 18), and the Houston Dynamo tied the Fire’s winter 2020 tally by making 16 signings of their own in the winter of 2023.

Since the initial burst in 2020, however, the team has made a below-average number of signings each year and every window except the 2022 winter window.  In that window, the team signed 11 players, including Xherdan Shaqiri, Rafael Czichos, and, at the tail end, Chris Mueller, one more than the median of 10.

The team made no signings that summer, however, giving, compared to a league median of three, meaning that the Fire still signed fewer than the average number of players throughout the year.

Throughout his Heitz’s tenure, the Fire have made particularly poor use of the summer transfer windows: From 2021 to 2023 (three windows), the team brought in just two players over the summer: Federico Navarro arrived in the summer of 2021, and Ousmane Doumbia was brought in on loan from sister club FC Lugano this past season.

That is the fewest in the league over the past three summer windows: Seattle is next-last, but they brought in four players in the summer over that span and, unlike the Fire, have been perennial contenders nearly every season. Their roster, to a large extent, has produced results in a way the Fire’s hasn’t.

The summer window is significant because while it is the secondary window in MLS, it is the primary window in Europe, and most European players have contracts that expire on June 1st. European teams may be more likely to part with key players in the summer window because it allows them to bring in replacements before the start of their regular seasons.

Other MLS teams have been able to use the summer window to effectively overhaul their roster mid-season. The L.A. Galaxy, for example, were on the outside of the playoffs but looking to climb the standings and brought in six players over the summer – three times more than the Fire over the past three summer windows combined – despite facing transfer restrictions that barred the team from signing players from teams abroad.

The Fire, meanwhile, have never brought in more than a single addition in the summer window, effectively preventing the team from reworking the roster if (and, if we’re being honest, when) results by that point have made it clear that the team is not on a trajectory to make the postseason.

At times, the Fire haven’t made use of the primary window, either: In the 2021 winter window, the team made just four signings, tied for fewest in the league with the San Jose Earthquakes (who snuck into the playoffs as the 8th and final seed in the West the year prior) and Toronto FC, who finished the year prior just three points shy of the best record in the league. The Fire’s five signings between the winter and summer windows were the fewest in the league outside of Toronto that year.

The choice was deliberate: In an interview with Tom Bogert following the 2020 season that saw the team miss the playoffs, Heitz preached “continuity… as the one thing we lacked,” stating that he believed that “we didn’t end up in the table where we belonged,” and that “even against the best teams in this league, we were good."

The Fire would wind up with 34 points the following season, exactly matching the 1.0 points-per-game average the team achieved the year prior. That was good for 12th in the Eastern Conference, as the team scored 36 goals over the course of the campaign, good for second-fewest in the league after expansion team Austin FC’s 35 tallies.

This concludes Part II of the series. If you haven’t already, check out Part I, which puts the team's results over the past four years in league-wide context, and check back tomorrow for Part III.