Welcome to Fire20, a new weekly series that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club by making deep dives into the team’s history. This week we look back at the diaspora years in Naperville.
As we saw last week, 2001 was not the best season for the Chicago Fire. They were knocked out of both the MLS Cup playoffs and the U.S. Open Cup by the Los Angeles galaxy, and walked away from their fourth season in existence with nothing shiny.
2002 was a season that was full of anticipation.