In these days of tight purse strings and rosters paved with similarly talented journeymen, it is notably difficult to miss the MLS playoffs. In fact, it’s difficult to underperform for any lengthy period of time without being a raging dumpster fire. Some level of competence should get you to .500. What you do with the rest is largely on you.

This notion throws pale, anemic shadows on the Chicago Fire’s reality over the past half decade. Over the last two seasons the Fire finished with 61 total points (that wouldn’t have even won the Supporter’s Shield a few years) and the worst record in the league two years in a row.

To give you some semblance of where we are, no existing team in MLS has ever done that before, finished last in a unified table in consecutive years. It is difficult to be anywhere other than the middle of the pack in odd years, and the Fire were at its feet now for two in a row. We have already charted a new course into the flames and where we come out on the other side is yet to be determined.

The surprise in all this was inside Veljko Paunovic’s inner sanctum. Paunovic supposedly gutted the Fire’s previous wonky Frankball (of both Klopas and Yallop varieties) and moved to a sort of frenetic all-in attacking style. He did it to a degree with the Serbian team that won the 2015 U20 World Cup (the one that beat the U.S. in the quarters, for what it’s worth), and he had this young ideologue tag on him when he started. It only takes minor tactical tweaks to see major shifts in a league as even as MLS.

Instead, the Fire were (out of 20 teams):

– 18th in passing accuracy (74.7%)

– 20th in possession share (45.8%)

– 16th in open play goals (26)

– 2nd in long balls per game (77), 20th in short passes (300)

– 20th in shots on target per game (3.7)

– 3rd-highest in shots surrendered per game (14.8)

The Fire weren’t all bad, but they were as close as you can get in today’s MLS to being irredeemable. They had simultaneously the worst goal-scoring record in the East and the third-worst defensive record in the entire league. And even then, in the latter case they were only three surrendered goals from being dead last.

Point is, the Fire weren’t simply They’re Rebuilding But We Can See The Kernels Of A Brighter Dawn bad. They were Oh God Somebody Help This Club From On High bad.

Perhaps the big man heard the pleas from Bridgeview.

Over the last week or so we’ve been monitoring the Fire’s continually opening chase for Manchester United castoff Bastian Schweinsteiger. The seemingly perpetually injured midfielder never had much of a chance in Jose Mourinho’s vision, and he’s being shopped for the January window. He undoubtedly has a host of options, MLS ever one of them for those creaky-kneed European stars on the wane in their own firmament of origin.

But the Fire? Is this happening? Is Bastian Schweinsteiger really about to join the worst team in the league?

According to Jeff Carlisle, it sure as heck looks like it.

Nothing is official yet, but the fact that Chicago holds his discovery rights after Paunovic openly courted him at a dinner in Manchester sort of lays the strategy bare. If they can work out the particulars, the Fire will sign Schweinsteiger if they can.

The Fire have not had anything approaching an international seat-filler (sorry Arne) since Cuauhtemoc Blanco left Bridgeview in 2009 with his 23 goals and creative capacity to dazzle. Those Blanco years were really Chicago’s last explosive burst of sustained relevance in the league. A late run to the playoffs in 2007 and second-place Eastern Conference finishes in 2008 and 2009 pooled into a fourth-place finish in 2010 and a sixth-place finish in 2011. Incredibly, considering the league, Chicago hasn’t made the postseason since.

Schweinsteiger will help, of course, if he comes. He will sell tickets and create the general perception that a maligned ownership group derided for not pouring more resources into the beleaguered club cares enough to splash major DP money. And Schweinsteiger will command it. His resume and perceived utility (32 is young in DP dog years) more or less assures that.

And perhaps that’s what Chicago needs. But this illustrates a wider point that when it comes to DP signings in certain markets, PR beats system utility.

Schweinsteiger in Paunovic’s system makes little sense. He doesn’t have the legs to keep up with it, and unless Paunovic intends a holistic style change to fit his new big money signing (which he might), Schweinsteiger has neither the speed in his legs to keep up with breakneck presses behind David Accam nor the regista qualities to drop in over-the-top balls like Pirlo. Remember, the Fire more or less ignored balls along the ground in 2016 and crushed errant long balls like few other teams in the league.

Paunovic will of course shift some of his mentality to fit Schweinsteiger as you would any new piece, but it goes to show the Fire are essentially sitting in the Beckham era in its policy pursuits. The Sounders under Sigi Schmid and now Brian Schmetzer finished in the top three in short passes (under 25 yards), leading them naturally into a Nico Lodeiro. The Timbers, in the midst of their switch to a longer style, found Fanendo Adi. FCD (Mauro Diaz), RBNY (Sacha Kljestan), Montreal (Nacho Piatti) all went fit over fanfare with their signings.

There’s an argument to be made that the Fire can’t afford not to chase a name. Apathy levels in Chicago are nearing all-time highs as the club flails for relevancy in a market awash with title-winning teams like the Blackhawks and Cubs. The Fire do need something to catch the interest of casuals who’ve abandoned the team in its irrelevancy. If that’s Schweinsteiger, then so be it.

But it’s also unclear how much Schweinsteiger – with his chronic injuries and stylistic differences to Paunovic’s mutant Gegenpress/Route 1 hybrid – would actually help the team considering the sums he’ll most certainly command. Either way, we might be about to find out.