Owner ‘enjoyed’ tough first year
Joe Mansueto optimistic about the club’s future in Chicago, changing its logo and spending to improve
The first season of Joe Mansueto’s tenure as the majority owner and chairman of the Fire wasn’t the smoothest. The team’s anticipated return to Soldier Field was held without fans in attendance because of COVID-19. The rebuilt roster, coaching staff and front office won just five of 23 matches, missing the expanded Major League Soccer playoffs.
And the team’s redesigned crest, unveiled in November 2019, was met with derision from fans and neutrals alike.
But Mansueto is an optimist, and his first full season in charge was — daresay — an enjoyable one.
“I just really enjoyed my first year of ownership,” he said. “I’m more convinced and more confident than ever about the potential for this club in terms of its popularity in Chicago and also in creating a championship club in MLS.”
That type of confidence, Mansueto said, stems from his belief not only in the groundwork laid last season but in the hope a vaccinated, post-pandemic world will give the team a lift once fans can see the team play on the lakefront.
“There’s tremendous potential for the Chicago Fire in this market that is untapped,” he said. “I went to all the home games at Soldier Field and it’s a tremendous experience. I just wish fans could have been in the stadium, and I think once we get fans in there and overlay a fan experience with the experience on the pitch, you’re going to love it.”
The Tribune on Thursday spoke with Mansueto in a wideranging interview. Here’s what else he had to say about the state of the Fire heading into 2021.
1. The Fire hope to create a new crest that incorporates Chicago-centric imagery.
Few things rankled Fire fans over the last 13 months quite like the team’s redesigned logo, which ditched the club’s original Florian cross badge for one dubbed the “Fire Crown” to represent the city’s rebirth after the Great Chicago Fire.
Reviews were largely negative, and Mansueto last year said if opinions didn’t change, the club would create a new crest.
Fans got their wish on Jan. 8, when the team announced it was scrapping the “Fire Crown” starting with the 2022 season.
Mansueto said the Fire decided to pull the plug about a month ago, saying, “the negative comments outweighed the positive ones overwhelmingly.”
“I felt one year was the appropriate time to give it and the fans were pretty clear in their sentiment,” he said.
The Fire hired soccer designer Matthew Wolff to help create the new logo with brand design and consulting firm Studio/lab and sports marketing agency rEvolution. The team is encouraging fans to give their input at chicagofirefc.com/crest.
Mansueto said fans will “drive a lot of the direction” of the design, but one thing he hopes to see is a design that makes use of Chicago iconography.
“There should certainly be some things that are unique to Chicago that find its way into the crest, not a generic crest that could be in any city,” he said. “How you incorporate a Chicagoness into the crest in an artful way, that takes special talent.”
2. 2020 was a disappointment, but Mansueto is high on the Fire’s progress — and likens Year One to the start of a painting.
Last offseason was a whirlwind for the Fire, who hired sporting director Georg Heitz and technical director Sebastian Pelzer to rebuild the soccer side essentially from scratch. The duo, who joined the club in late December 2019, hired Raphael Wicky as coach and added more than 10 players — including filling all three designated player spots — in a two-month span.
The turnaround was impressive considering the tight time frame before the March 1 season opener. But their efforts still yielded only a 5-10-8 record, no road victories and an 11th-place finish in the 14-team Eastern Conference.
Although Mansueto said he shares “our fans’ disappointment,” he looks at last season in a larger context.
“The results weren’t what we wanted to see,” he said. “But given where they started and the growth that they made in terms of developing the style of play, putting the roster together, all of those things, there was a tremendous amount of achievement for the club in 2020.”
That might raise eyebrows, but the billionaire and Morningstar founder said to think of the year-over-year changes at the club as the start of a painting.
“I feel like it’s creating a painting,” he said. “Last year we got the first coat of the painting down, we got the subjects in the right place. You could kind of see the outline of the painting. This year we go back and we add more depth and detail to the painting and make it even better. We made a lot of progress that first year, we’ve got the basics of the painting done. Now we go back and add more depth and refinement and take it to the next level.”
3. The Fire are looking to build a practice facility in the city. Despite their move to Soldier Field, the Fire continue to practice at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview. Part of the Fire’s $65.5 million deal to amend their lease with the suburb called for the team to pay for upgrades to the facilities, but the long-term goal is to find practice space in Chicago.
Mansueto said the Fire are looking for 20 to 25 acres that would accommodate multiple fields, training and recovery facilities and space for club personnel.
But finding that kind of land is no easy feat in a major urban area.
“I would like to see our main training facility be somewhere in the city,” Mansueto said. “One of the downsides of being in a major metro area like Chicago is it’s pretty well built up. There’s not a lot of 25-acre parcels laying around.
“We’ve been looking over the past year. It’s a long-term project; it’s not something you can do overnight. We’ve got some ideas and we hope to make progress on that front in ’21.”
For now, Mansueto — whose various real estate investments have included the purchase of the Wrigley Building and the Waldorf Astoria hotel — said the goal is to build a practice facility, not develop land around it.
“That wouldn’t be the primary goal,” he said. “The primary goal is to develop soccer talent and so that’s the main focus. If as a secondary benefit there was some real estate that you could develop into a beer hall next to it that could look out onto the field, that could be fun and we’re open to that, but that’s not the goal.”
4. Mansueto is ‘willing to spend as fast’ as possible to expand the Fire’s scouting network and youth academy.
Mansueto hasn’t been shy about making money available to Heitz and Pelzer as they rebuild the team’s soccer operations.
And there should be no let-up anytime soon, he said.
“I’m willing to spend as fast as Georg and Sebastian are willing to build in terms of a scouting organization and building up our development of the academy and youth programs,” Mansueto said. So far that has been true. The Fire owner gave Heitz and Pelzer the green light to establish a scouting network in the middle of the COVID-19 shutdown.
That department is expected to continue its growth, and the same applies to the academy, which saw a number of players join the senior team last season.
“Both those operations are critical to our future,” Mansueto said. “If you’re going to have a championship club, you need to be an expert at attracting the very best talent you can globally. And to do that you need a strong scouting organization and then developing your own homegrown talent. We’ve got a robust market here in the Chicagoland area and broader Midwest to attract homegrowns to our club, and we should be pushing very hard on both those fronts.”
From a business and sponsorship perspective, the Fire’s finances took a hit because of the lack of game revenue — something that affected all sports amid the pandemic. Mansueto said the team lost a few sponsors through “a little bit of attrition” but retained most of its major deals, including one with Motorola.
Unlike a few MLS teams — and the league itself — the Fire did not lay off employees, Mansueto said.
“Everybody’s got different philosophies, and I like a sharedsacrifice approach to running a business,” he said. “We all share some pain but we hang on to our teammates and we keep everybody employed. … We all got through it and I think we’ll come out stronger for it.”
5. The Fire’s original deal with ESPN+ is up but games will continue to air on WGN-9.
The Fire signed an exclusive threeyear deal with ESPN+ on the cusp of the 2018 season, taking most games off local broadcast or cable television.
The Fire were the first team in MLS to sign a deal with the streaming platform that now has a broader contract with the league to air games.
Last season the Fire reached a multiyear deal with WGN-9 with games simulcast on ESPN+, giving fans the option to tune in on either platform without a blackout.
The club is exploring its options, but all signs point to a streaming partner of some sort in addition to games on WGN. A return to ESPN+ is an option.
“I thought what we had last year was perfect: free over-the-air television on WGN,” Mansueto said. “That was a big hit for our fans and at the same time having a streaming platform with ESPN+ is a nice complement to that.”