Fire woes hitting home for coach Frank Klopas

There are probably people out there who love the Fire as much, but nobody loves the team more than Frank Klopas. A Chicagoan whose career dates to the indoor Sting, Klopas played for the Fire during their glorious 1998 double-title season, has held roles as a coach, executive and broadcaster and is a passionate franchise ambassador.

Ever an optimist, something seemed different about Klopas after the Fire’s 1-0 loss Wednesday to Charlotte FC. The Fire (2-7-4, 10 points) are winless in six matches, haven’t scored a goal at Soldier Field in 371 minutes and have plummeted to 14th in the 15-team Eastern Conference.

“Every loss, for me, hits more at home than anything else, and I care,” Klopas said. “So it’s not easy to come here every day, when results don’t go your way and just have to be honest. Right now, we just haven’t found the right formula, and it’s a lot on my shoulders. It’s on my shoulders to find that. And, yeah, when it’s not going right, it does sit at home more and more emotionally because of how I feel about the club.”

Klopas likely would do anything the Fire asked him to do. Under sporting director Georg Heitz, he has served as interim coach twice, following the in-season dismissals of Raphael Wicky and Ezra Hendrickson. When he replaced Hendrickson last May, most assumed Klopas would finish the 2023 season before giving way to another coach.

That didn’t happen. Klopas is front and center for another bad Fire team owner Joe Mansueto allowed Heitz to build.

“I love the club. I came back because I felt I could help the club in this way,” Klopas said. “And it’s a difficult one also for me because I wouldn’t do this for any other team, to come back. I had opportunities; I stayed here. And it’s extremely difficult when in moments like this because I need to find solutions and I haven’t been able to do so up to now.”

Defender Andrew Gutman isn’t blaming Klopas or his assistants.

“The coaches can only do so much,” Gutman said. “They can give you the game plan, they can tell you the tendencies of other teams, but at the end of the day, it comes down to what we do on the field. The staff has given us good ideas, good game plans, and we have to do a better job executing it.”

It’s impossible to know whether the game plan isn’t good enough or if the roster is too weak to execute it. It’s likely a combination of both. Klopas isn’t known for his tactical acumen, and Heitz has only assembled losing teams with the Fire.

For better or worse, Klopas and the Fire will continue looking for solutions. They’ll need to find them fast. They host defending MLS Cup champion Columbus (4-2-6, 18 points) on Saturday.

“[The] only thing I can tell you is, we have to keep trying. But right now, the [team’s] confidence level is really low,” Klopas said. “And you can just see that nothing’s really working for us. We get in good spots, we get opportunities, it just seems like nothing seems to be going in the net. It seems like they have four or five goalies in there at times. And with us, just one opportunity goes in.”