The Base Violence Necessary For Change

Oh hi! I’m Jiggly. And it’s a Tuesday.

So… I’m a bit late this week. Look, I had a lot of fun watching the Spongebob Super Bowl, but I also had a lot to drink. And instead of a hangover, like a normal person, I had a real bad depressive episode and was left unable to write my column. So I decided to take some time to get myself back together before I dug into this one. I’m not going to push myself just to get a column out because of a deadline, I wanna make sure that what I write is going to be the best thing that I can write for you guys. And I needed that extra time this week because there’s a lot of emotions here with this week’s column.

The Base Violence Necessary For Change

This Sunday we finally got our first glimpse of the 2024 Chicago Fire. And just as quickly, we were once again reminded that this is still the Chicago Fire. Despite the improvements that have been made this offseason, a lot about that stream perfectly encapsulated what is still very wrong with the club. First of all, it was only available through the opposing team’s YouTube channel. Unless you were like me and got to click on the link for the unlisted stream, you’d have to go through LAFC’s website, sign up for their stuff, and only then get the stream. On the stream was a commentator who seemed to be doing everything to pronounce Fire players’ names wrong. Which makes sense because the chat was flooded with Fire fans, more Fire fans than LAFC fans. Because Fire fans wanted to see their team for the first (and likely only) time in the preseason. But I’ll get to the fan stuff later. Cause first, in the simplest possible way, the Fire were still not good enough. They took an early lead, but the moment the defense was replaced with our depth players, it crumbled. It makes sense, depth isn’t as good as the starters, but they’re crumbling against the opponent’s depth players. Once again, the gulf in quality between the Fire and the best in the league was clear and visible. Even with all the loud noises from this offseason, we are still left with only being a good team “on paper”.

There’s something about that phrase that haunts the Fire harder than Luigi’s Mansion. “On Paper.” Because the Fire have gone through so many different iterations of being “good on paper.” First we were “good on paper” because of how many DP signings were being made, only to discover that pretty much all of those DPs made a minimal impact on the squad as a whole and the results on the pitch got worse. Then they were “good on paper” because we had the league MVP, we had a German superstar, we had the former Rookie of the Year, we had the best homegrown player in the league. We were “good on paper” because we were just a couple pieces away, the team just needed to gel a bit more, there were injuries at the wrong time. “Good on paper” because we as Fire fans could see the good in players, coaches, and executives that were wrong for us. It was just pure luck that we couldn’t make the playoffs. That 2.9% chance just happened to come along. Pretty soon we’re gonna have to start using the Drake Equation to make these calculations.

We’re just back to that again. This offseason, we made a couple of solid signings, but the squad appears to be fundamentally unchanged. The first team has gotten marginally better, and the starters are a bit better, but there’s nothing behind them. That lack of depth we had last season is still there. It’s obvious that it’s there because we saw LAFC’s depth completely outclass the Fire’s depth. You cannot survive an entire season with that blind hope that we won’t have a single injury, that none of our best players in our weakest positions will have health problems. But it’s not like there’s no one there. We are overloaded with players that just aren’t quite good enough. The sheer lack of room is killing us. We’re sitting on two really solid moves and maybe even a third, but we don’t have the roster slots available because we clogged those up with long-term contract deals for players that either turned out to be busts or were the wrong player to sign in the first place. While Hugo Cuypers and Kellyn Acosta have now been announced, they still need to shed one more player to fit both into the senior roster slots. Jairo Torres may have been given a mutual termination, but they still need to find another spot and I’m not sure if that counted as their one-time buyout this season.

The whole first installment of this meditation was about who the Fire could be “on paper”. What they could do if they just got it right. And it’s been so long since they got it right that I’m tired of it. Every season, the Fire come out and say “We’ve really turned it around this time.” And every season, those changes have done nothing beyond surface-level changes of names and specific number values. And this season, we’re being given another team where we’re told that changes were made where they were important, but the team was already in a pretty good spot so most everyone stayed. But when you actually dissect what the issues were, you see that they were still there. Cuypers is a solid finisher, but this is the sort of team, the sort of league, that is begging for someone with some speed. And he’s not that sort of guy. Acosta is a fantastic signing for a multitude of reasons, but if you judge what he’s actually done recently, he’s been slowly falling off. And while Arnaud Soquet, Miguel Navarro, and likely Carlos Terán are being replaced by Alan Arigoni, Andrew Gutman, and Tobias Salquist, most of that feels like a straight swap. Gutman is the only one who is a clear upgrade in the spot. You look at what’s been done and you feel a bit lied to, like the club only listened just enough to where they could gaslight you into believing that they actually did their work.

Speaking of gaslighting, the club has been struggling this offseason when it comes to actually interacting with supporters and club history properly. Especially when they start using the word “Tradition”. I think that there’s a lot of marketing consultants who love to pull that out in corporate speech, who use it as a buzzword to try to evoke some sort of feeling of connection; but they chose the WRONG fan base to use it around. “Tradition” is a word that holds a lot of weight around here and that’s not just because all we really have is our past right now. It is a key tenant to the identity of the club, “Tradition, Honor, Passion”. Those three words have been used to describe who this club has been trying to be since the beginning. Most of those players know it by heart (although in a different order). Those words are foundational to supporters. So when one of them is being used in such a reckless way, it’s gonna bother some people. If the club’s new marketing staff wants to know what cool things Fire fans want to have happen at games and see if they make things more fun, then they should say that. Saying “Tradition” like that feels tone-deaf and saying “We’re gonna make new traditions” is something that’s going to get an immediate reaction out of people who have fought long and hard to keep the traditions that we still have around here, who watched other traditions legislated away back when the front office was actually hostile towards us.

Really, it feels like the majority of the Fire’s current front office staff are people who aren’t fully familiar with the club and its history. Which I don’t think is actually that much of a problem, I don’t think it’s that uncommon either. They shouldn’t be expected to immediately understand the culture and even those who’ve been around a bit longer than most still struggle a bit. There are only maybe four or five people there who have that full grasp of what this club means. But… I guess it feels like they’re not really letting those people in on the conversations surrounding the idea of talking about “Tradition”, of talking about club history or supporter culture. It’s something I’ve been yelling about for years, that the Fire have struggled to really connect to the past in a way that can actually inform the future and now we’re seeing some really dumb things happen.

What I am about to talk about has no bearing on anything, but I think that it is just as symbolic as the Fire not having their own preseason game stream. Have you guys seen that jersey bracket thing? It’s just a bit weird to be like “Here’s all of the best jerseys” and then leave out the one jersey that fans have constantly talked about wanting to see some sort of revival of (the blue flag jersey from 2005) while keeping a jersey that had probably one of the most mid receptions I’ve ever seen (the 2022-23 home kit). In fact, a lot of those jerseys seemed a bit more recent than some older ones that were actually pretty popular, like the other Puma-era kits, the 2010 kits (I loved that collar), or, ya know, the actual kits from 1998. Because they had to issue a correction in a reply after finding out that what they’d posted as the 1998 kit was actually the 1999 kit. Fun fact: The ‘98 kits were actually never put up for sale because they were essentially just templates with some stickers on them. When Peter Wilt had rejected the “Chicago Rhythm” identity, Nike basically said “You’re on your own, then” and he had to basically pick out a template himself for the club to use. It’s why the lettering was silver, it’s why the away kits were black instead of navy. It’s a small thing, but it makes up such a core part of the Fire’s identity, that idea of not just following what the rest of the league is doing and pushing for something better. It’s the sort of fun fact that someone in the room needed to know, that needed to remember “Oh, right, that’s a thing.” Anyway, this small story leads to a slightly bigger and more contentious story.

Earlier this month, the Fire revealed that they were looking for some suggestions for a Fire goal song. They’d already put together a list that had Fall Out Boy and Motley Crue, but there was one song that was notably missing. The literal “Fire Anthem” that was written and recorded for the Fire to use as their goal song all the way back in 2002 and had been used for over a decade (with some minor tweaks). Like, how do you forget that? “Fire Anthem” was made by Deals Gone Bad, a local band with a few Fire fans among its members. They took an existing Fire chant and gave it some extra energy and some full instrumentation. It was used from 2002 all the way to around 2019. I’m not sure when exactly, but I know that they just completely dumped it when the rebrand happened. I can understand not wanting to use the same recording for years, I’ll admit that “Bear Down” and “Fly Eagles Fly” type recordings are a bit cringey, but this is something that was a tradition for Fire fans. This is the sort of thing that didn’t really need to be changed, but it was. And now we have the club acting like it never existed in the first place. And if you can’t use that recording, then find another local band to try to put their own spin on it. Maybe give the old recording to DJ Step and let him try something with it. Just try to actually know where “Tradition” exists and respect it rather than using that term as some corporate buzzword to make you sound more trendy to hipsters who probably won’t come to games anyway if there aren’t any organic traditions, the ones that have been forgotten. BTW, there is a petition floating around to use the old goal song, so if that means something to you, sign it.

I’m used to there being petitions about the Fire. Hell, I started one about trying to get Andrew Hauptman to sell the club when I was a kid. The Fire had lost a lot of big supporters by the time we got to that point. And they’ve lost a whole lot more since then. Even now, there are still a lot of people who are pissed about this team. They’re completely justified. The ones who’ve left are probably a whole lot smarter than those of us who are still here. It’s clear that while there’s been a lot of lip service to change, most of the changes haven’t mattered. The changes that fans have experienced over the past decade have largely been unwelcome ones: A rebrand, rising prices, and the growing ignorance towards the club’s history. Some of those who left saw it all coming, they’ve told me since then. They got off the roller coaster a long time ago. But we’re still here. We’re still stuck on this ride. And as a whole, I just feel tired of feeling like the Chicago Fire are only capable of making bad decisions. Because unlike my friend Adnan, I can’t just stop. I care too much, I still believe deep down that they shouldn’t be like this. And if you’re here reading this, then you probably can’t stop either (even if you are Adnan). The fact that you are on this site reading a long rambling column about the club means that you care, even if you say you don’t.

I got a $60 gift card to Steam for Christmas and one of the games I got was one that I already had, it’s called Victoria II. Our physical copy didn’t work on my personal computer in my room, so I decided to just buy a new downloaded version. The game involves going through the Victorian Era and controlling a nation during that time. One of the things that comes up are national policy changes that you can enact. You have a “national consciousness”, which sorta gauges how aware your population is of issues within your country. And they can be super aware of issues (like how you don’t allow voting and have basically no labor reforms), but you don’t actually get to make changes in policy until another number rises up. That is the “national militancy”. What I’m getting at here is that you can’t create change without first getting mad, without first genuinely getting up and speaking about it. Otherwise, you’re just sitting around. You need that “Base Violence Necessary for Change”.

When things are going bad, speak up. When things are wrong, get loud. It’s important to say something when you feel like the club is making wrong decisions when it sounds like they’re trying to rewrite their own history (especially history that we’re actually proud of). Years of horrible play on the pitch, of front office negligence and outright hostility have eroded support for this club. We are what’s left. And we need to speak up and get loud to get things back on track. And that doesn’t just mean getting loud to the club, that means getting loud with each other. We need to rebuild on the pitch, off the pitch, and in the stands. Those of us on the outside here need to start actually cultivating and maintaining this community in a way that will both honor the past and grow it to the level that we are meant to be at. The infighting and power struggles that we’ve seen over the years in the fanbase have only further driven people away. Everyone needs to start taking accountability and when that happens, it’ll be a whole lot harder for things to go wrong like this in the future. With people who care about the club all pulling in the same direction, we can prevent the problem of people forgetting what “Tradition” means, our voices can be louder and clearer both when we cheer and criticize the club, and we can go back to being a community that the rest of the league is jealous of (like back in those “Tradition” days).

The meditation isn’t over. We’ve gone through all of the emotions that we need to understand and hold onto, but there’s still one week left before the season.

Next week: We Are Chicago.

Miscellaneous Notes

Aww, Here it Goes. It was just nice to see the Chicago Fire playing in 2024. We gotta remember to take the good from these things. We’ve got a new red jersey coming out tomorrow, too.

NVP. I’m always annoyed when the QB immediately wins Super Bowl MVP, so I would like to submit my vote for NVP to Tom Kenny. That man was having so much fun. I need a Mr. Show revival that actually includes him and Jack Black.

All That Jaz. I watched the whole 4th quarter of that Iowa v Nebraska game where Caitlin Clark was supposed to break the NCAA record. She didn’t hit a single shot, but Nebraska hit theirs and now I’m a massive Jaz Shelley fan.

Cupcake. The title of this column was a reference to Arcane, which I finally watched over the offseason. Truly amazing, I love every bit of it. I’m still not gonna play League.

Song of the Week. I do not talk enough about how much I love St. Vincent, especially early St. Vincent, so I just wanted to toss her in. Strange Mercy is one of my favorite albums of all time, but this specific recording of “Just The Same, But Brand New” that she did for her tour vlogs from The Actor just has a special vibe. (slight flashing lights warning around 4 minutes in)

I love you.

And I’ll see you next week.