Selling professional soccer to the casual sports fan in Chicago is a tough market to be in.

I’m a firm believer that professional soccer support in Chicago does exist in mass numbers, but lies mostly dormant in large part due to the fortunes of the local top-tier club over the last decade or so. The Chicago Fire played their first game in 1998 and found success right away. A couple of trophies in that first year should have been a springboard to establishing a foothold, or at least a toe in the door in terms of joining the crowded mainstream sports conversation.

To be fair, there was something beginning to be built back then although MLS and its new team in Chicago were dwarfed in the sports news by the Jordan-era Bulls. There was excitement created among local soccer-loving communities, but as the team’s success faded – for reasons that I won’t go into right now – that interest waned and the mainstream success that could have been accomplished by a burgeoning history and tradition of winning disappeared.

The Fire have floundered in recent years as MLS grows and television/marketing contracts increase in volume. The latest rounds of league expansion are greeted by ready-made fan bases and season-ticket demand before games are even played. That new-team-smell opportunity is by the wayside now, but that doesn’t mean a different road back to relevance doesn’t exist.

The years since Cuauhtemoc Blanco’s departure following the 2009 season have been difficult to say the least. In 2010, I began writing a blog about the Fire at ChicagoNow. Sam Stejskal, the original writer, departed for a post covering the team for MLSsoccer.com after a couple of seasons as a sort of replacement for the Chicago Tribune’s Red Card blog, which was popular among Fire fans and written by then full-time soccer scribe Luis Arroyave. Other outlets still covered the team, as the Daily Herald’s Orrin Schwarz has since the early days. The Sun-Times also still employed reporters to write soccer stories.

Upon Sam’s departure, I took over the Chicago Fire Confidential blog for two reasons. The first being that I didn’t want daily Fire coverage to slip back into the days of lurking on message boards waiting for a bit of news that wasn’t readily available via traditional outlets. The second reason centered around the premise that I believed Fire and soccer conversations could be had with the same insight and enthusiasm that was evident in the coverage of the other “big” teams in town.

Bastian Schweinsteiger has helped the Fire to succeed this season. (Photo courtesy of Chicago Fire Soccer Club)

The Cubs, White Sox, Bears, Bulls and most recently the Blackhawks have parlayed decades of ups and downs and wins and losses into cultivating large, passionate fan bases that are hungry for the type of time and attention that has been afforded to the other major sports active in the city. The Fire, on the other hand, have had a fraction of that time and have captured even less of the conversation than some of the local collegiate teams.

Therein lies the reason for my enthusiasm toward the forthcoming content at The Athletic. In order for fans to get behind a team and subsequently support the outlets providing unbiased, independent information and discussion surrounding that team, there has to be a sense of commitment toward that content. I was impressed, as I’m sure new readers will be, with the type of work being done in covering the other “major” sports in Chicago. The Athletic goes beyond what one would typically find in everyday mainstream sports coverage because they’re committed to it. It’s what they do.

That commitment also has to come across as honest and without the encumbrance of relying on the subject of the conversation to provide platforms for the conversation. Fans will see through it otherwise. The audience for the game of soccer and ultimately the Fire is buoyed by wins and losses. Simply being the only game in town won’t work in Chicago when there are literally other games in town. Nelson Rodriguez and Veljko Paunovic have put together a team that is now winning and at the top of the league as I’m writing this. The story is one worth reading about, talking about, and at the very least giving it a look – possibly for a second time.

Wins have been scarce since I started writing Chicago Fire Confidential back in April 2010, but covering a winning side wasn’t the reason for the time and effort put into the blog. The desire to present a platform for the type of coverage that didn’t exist was my main motivation. I would like to think I’ve done that to some extent over the last seven years and The Athletic seems to be a natural spot for the type of content to grow and develop. The commitment to baseball, basketball, football and hockey are there and is evident in the content. Win or lose, the commitment to soccer has to be there as well if that dormant fan base is going to stick around.

Since 2010, the Tribune has dropped its full-time soccer coverage and its freelance soccer writers, with soccer coverage coming via the exception of occasional collaborative exclusives. Others, besides the Daily Herald, stopped attending games altogether. That may also be a result of the current climate of the newspaper industry, but mainstream media outlets seem to slowly be noticing that there may be some actual winning going on at Toyota Park, so you’re bound to see more of the Fire and soccer in Chicago as the MLS All-Star Game approaches.

Thanks to The Athletic for making the commitment to soccer content and ultimately to you, the readers, who have shown that there is a demand for it. Win or lose, The Athletic does what it does because of the passion and desire to follow your team through the ups and downs. Hopefully, you’ll find this is the place you want to find it whether you’re a casual fan, a new fan or a long-time supporter.

(Top image: Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports)