BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. – After missing out on the postseason in four of the last five years, the Chicago Fire will be one of several teams facing a more difficult task of advancing to the playoffs in 2015 with the addition of expansion clubs Orlando City and New York City FC to the Eastern Conference.
The league’s two high-profile new additions have already invested heavily on players ahead of their debut season in MLS, and will introduce the world-class talents of Kaka, David Villa and Frank Lampard when they begin their campaigns next March.
However, Fire head coach Frank Yallop, who has played and managed in the league since its inaugural season in 1996, is genuinely excited by the challenge and potential posed by the league’s newcomers.
“Orlando and New York coming into the East is exciting,” Yallop told reporters recently. “With expansion teams you never know how they’re going to come out of the gate. Lately they’ve been good because they’ve really spent and they really get after it.”
Yallop also acknowledged that next season's conference realignment, which sees perennial playoff contenders Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo move to the West, might make life even tougher in 2015.
“Change is good, Houston and Kansas going over to the West is good, but obviously we’ll see how the two new teams do, but for me it’s always an exciting time and it’s getting harder and harder to make the playoffs,” he added.
Orlando and NYCFC have been proactive ahead of their debut season, attracting the attention and imagination of fans, both locally and nationally, with intensive promotional and marketing campaigns, augmented by both clubs’ presence on social media.
That is a far cry from the humble beginnings of clubs in the early days of MLS, as Yallop recalled: “When I started at San Jose [in 2001] I didn’t even have a phone or an office for a couple of months. It’s different now, they get to sign players before the team is even formed. It’s a little bit different, but it’s exciting.”
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Yallop recently returned from a 10-day scouting trip to Europe, where he spent some time assessing players in England, Sweden and Denmark as he seeks to strengthen his roster for 2015.
“I saw a lot of players, spoke to a lot of people and feel I made some good inroads to what’s available,” Yallop told the Fire's official website.
Meanwhile, the league on Friday confirmed the Fire will hold the 13th pick in next week's Dispersal Draft, which will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 19.
