Kick off time for the Fire's July 23rd friendly against the eventual Premier League champions Manchester United has been moved from 7pm to 4pm. World Football Challenge event organizers have decided to move the start up for a reason and I'm assuming it's not to announce the Fire have signed Wayne Rooney after the match. The most sensible guess for the move would seem to be to accomodate a broadcast schedule. There's been no announcement yet regarding television rights for the event but the thought of this team being exposed to a national audience against the Red Devils is not a pretty one.
Unless of course the Fire have some major new additions in store when the transfer window opens again on July 15.
Filed under: 2011 Regular Season
Tags: Chicago Fire, Manchester United
Corruption within FIFA during the World Cup voting process? Jack Warner in the middle of another scam? What a shock........
http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/worldcup/story/two-fifa-executives-accused-of-accepting-bribes-from-qatar
MLS Cup is headed back to Los Angeles. Make your reservations now....
http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2011/05/10/home-depot-center-selected-mls-cup-2011-host
The Fire salary schedule is amazing reading and apparently not always based on merit or ability,
Chaves at $45 and Nazirit at $42 (probably the MLS's best bargin) while other bench warmers are making much more, hopefully the Fire isn't eating all of the $2.1m of Castillo's salary, which would amount to nearly be half of the total players salary.
Not having him count against the salary cap should open next year's budget for more accomplished players, making 2012 another building year.
Working on a post about these very topics.
Whatever posseessed the Fire to go after Castillo, when they were going after him I checked his prior record and wondered what the big deal was in the first place. But what the hell did I know,
apparently they knew something that I didn't know (so much for trust)
I guess that if I was offered either Castillo or Nazirit and after reviewing their previous record
I'd probably choose Nazirit in the first place, without any regard to salary.
Maybe Nazirit will be another bust, but at least they are only out of chump change.
(that's one good deal I have to give them credit for)
However, if Klospas or DLC are interested in real estate, let me know, there's a bridge in Brooklyn which can be had at a greatly reduced price since the real estate collapse.
Castillo was a big gamble. I think they'll admit that openly. Unfortunately the roll came up snake eyes.
How does Castillo's salary figure into the cap? He is technically on loan right? When does his contract run out? If the loan expires and the other club doesn't "buy" him, does that mean he has to come back to the Fire or can they cut him and eat the salary? If that happens, that should be grounds to get rid of Klopas and DLC.
I just went back and looked at the loan announcement. Castillo was on loan to the Fire for one year starting last July from Shakhtar Donetsk. At the end of that loan, the Fire had the option to make it permanent. So that means Castillo was a loaned player sent out on loan, right? If that's the case, then his loan to the Fire from SD expires in July and he goes back to the Ukraine then, right? How does all of this play into the salary cap?
I'll try to clarify in a future post, but long story short is the Fire are not paying Castillo $2m and his salary does not affect the cap.
i dont think anyone could have forseen castillo turning out so poorly. sure he coulda been a bust for the price, but to accomplish absolutely NOTHING while he was here, even corben bone last season probly did at least as much as castillo, and we know how few minutes bone saw last season
It was a boom or bust gamble for sure. Aris is apparently not interested in keeping him either.
The last coach of the fire Dennis H was at the fire office yesterday. Lets hope that they are looking to do something with their coaching.
If they are, I'm pretty sure the next move would not be bringing back Hamlett.
When the Fire made the move last year we were in desperation mode. We had to do something. It wasn't working with the team that we had trying to make the playoffs. When they first announced that we were signing Ljungberg and Castillo it was great news. Everyone thought that we would make a strong playoff push and if we did get in, we would be the team that nobody wanted to play. The moves didn't pan out and we didn't make the playoffs. Everyone then blamed Castillo, which was fine because he never really played for us and was making alot of money. But you can't really blame them for making the move to try to make our team better at the time. Castillo is in his mid 20's and had a very bright future at one time. He was one of the better players playing for the Mexican National team in his career.
Agreed. It was a big gamble but still one I thought was worth taking. We didn't see much complaining about the signings until things were evident that it wasn't going to work but they did make the big move and did spend the money.
the fire will be hitting their stride right around the man utd game, dont ya think?