Georg Heitz is "Correcting the Whole Thing" for Fire's 2024
When the Chicago Fire opted to re-sign Georg Heitz and Frank Klopas as sporting director and head coach last fall, the response from the fans was not the fondest. With the team holding the longest active playoff drought in MLS, a move for more of the same was met with frustration. Four months on from those announcements, however, sentiments around the Fire have completely flipped.
“We've made a couple of mistakes,” Heitz said Tuesday. “I've made a couple of mistakes. It takes time to correct the whole thing.”
The moves made by the Fire this offseason did go a long way toward setting the franchise back on track, though. Expensive busts Jairo Torres and Kacper Przybyłko were among the players who the club shed, and they were active on the incoming market too, with a long list of new arrivals headlined by record signing Hugo Cuypers and highly-coveted free agent Kellyn Acosta.
Further positivity is fueled by the reversion to red uniforms after a four-year escapade in navy blue, as well as the return of a prodigal son in Andrew Gutman, who comes back to his boyhood club as one of the top left backs in MLS. 2024 gives the whole organization, which has been moving in the right direction off the field in almost every sense for the last two years, an opportunity to re-establish itself with the fans and get back to where it belongs in the league.
To do so, Heitz says, the team needed a mentality shift, and bringing in two proven winners in Cuypers and Acosta will go a long way in providing that.
“I see the whole atmosphere is different,” the sporting director said. “The mindset is different. This is also why we got [Cuypers and Acosta]. They are proven winners. They will bring a winning spirit to this team; a mentality that maybe in the past we lacked sometimes.”
In Cuypers, the Fire are making a signing unprecedented in club history. The Belgian center forward signed for a fee that, including add-ons, nearly doubles the fee of the previous club-record transfer for Xherdan Shaqiri in 2022, and could represent the third most expensive in league history. Cuypers is a proven striker in a highly competitive league, claiming the Golden Boot in the well-respected Belgian Pro League last season, and is someone Heitz hailed as a highly intelligent player in his prime.
Acosta, on the other hand, is as proven as it gets in Major League Soccer. The 28-year-old has been one of the top midfielders in the league for over half a decade, and was an important cog in the LAFC machine that reached back-to-back MLS Cups in 2022 and 2023 as well as the CONCACAF Champions League final.
“If you look back from the previous years, you're looking back at the early times,” Acosta said, “the Blancos, the Bocanegras, the Beasleys, the McBrides, that was a huge time. I think right now, we need to be back there.”
While competing for trophies this year will be a tall order, and the Fire are widely still viewed as a team on the playoff bubble, this week cumulates a hugely successful offseason that saw Heitz and the Fire put their past missteps behind them and look forward with ambition.
“We have many ingredients,” Heitz said. “Now we have to prove it in the regular season.”
