by Ridge Mahoney @ridgemax, Oct 17, 2014

By Ridge Mahoney

Frank Yallop has known frustration and elation as a player and coach in MLS, yet his first season in charge of the Fire took him into uncharted territory.

The man who won MLS Cups in San Jose and welcomed David Beckham to the Galaxy can only chuckle at a season during which Chicago tied 18 of 32 games, lost the reigning MVP to a season-ending surgery, and also lost a dynamic USA midfielder to a bizarre wrinkle in the league’s already byzantine rules regarding player acquisition.

“If you look at our ties, and take six of them and make them three wins and three losses, you have six more points and we’re in the playoff hunt,” says Yallop, whose team was officially eliminated more than a week ago and has already set a league record for deadlocks. “It’s crazy, crazy. We’ve missed penalties, but that’s football. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. You’ve got to get it done. We’ve been doing okay. Spirit’s good in the team, which is important.”

According to Yallop, the league’s decision to assign rights to USA midfielder Jermaine Jones via a coin flip won by New England dealt the team a double blow at a critical point in the season. In anticipation of landing Jones and to reward 2013 MVP Mike Magee with a new contract, Chicago had already moved salary off its books and acquired allocation money in several deals that included trading defender Jhon Kennedy Hurtado to Chivas USA, and thus didn’t have much leeway or time to find a replacement for Magee when a postponed surgery ended his season prematurely.

“We were trying to get Jones and we thought we had him,” said Yallop of negotiations and discussions regarding perhaps the top USA performer at the 2014 World Cup. “That’s why we were doing Jones instead of getting another forward and then Mike has to have the surgery and we’re kind of caught on both ends, not having a central midfielder and a striker.

“But it is what it is and we don’t make excuses and just get on with it. I’m excited about the pieces we’re going to keep and what we’re going to try and do next year.”

Yallop took over nearly a year ago after the Fire fired Frank Klopas, who took the job in Montreal. The teams tied for fifth place with identical 14-13-7 and 49 points; Montreal took the final playoff spot on a tiebreaker and promptly lost to Houston, 3-0, in the wild-card game. Yallop embarked on a major house-cleaning: Counting players waived or whose options were not picked up after the 2013 season, two dozen have departed in the past 11 months, including Hurtado, who had been acquired from Seattle in a trade last January during the SuperDraft. By August, he was at Chivas USA.

“I didn’t think maybe he played as well as he can do, and that’s not a slight,” says Yallop of the Hurtado deal by which Patrick Ianni also came to Chicago with Jalil Anibaba going in the other direction. “Sometimes a change is hard, he was in Seattle for four years and played very well there.

“I still think Jhon’s a good player, it just didn’t quite suit us and we had the opportunity to move a guaranteed contract –- he was going to be guaranteed for next year –- and I felt we were okay and wanted to make changes in that spot, and this trade gave us the room to do that.” (Hurtado is earning $210,000 this season.)

“If you want to get better in certain other areas, something’s got to give and players have to get moved because of money. To be honest, it was a money move and I felt [his contract] was going to handcuff us a little bit. So I felt the move was correct.” Yallop says for the same reason attacker Chris Rolfe ($225,000) was sent to D.C. United; that deal, the loan of Juan Luis Anangono to LDU Quito, and the trade of Dilly Duka ($190,000) to Montreal left the attack stifled when Magee underwent surgery.

A season of many such moves hasn’t produced great results. Chicago has just 33 points this season, so there’s been severe regression. Yallop points to the loss of Magee, who earned MVP honors in 2013 by going off the charts to score 21 goals (for which the team upgraded him to a contract worth $417,500 this season), and cites other factors as reasons for the slide in the standings.

“They won a lot of games last year, but they lost a lot, so I wanted to try to stabilize, and make sure that we don’t accept losing,” says Yallop. “I think that the group itself has done that. It you beat us, it’s pretty hard-fought. Other than a few games, it’s been pretty close in all our games.” Teams have found it tough to beat the Fire, which struggled in many games to put teams away and thus settled for so many ties.

Quincy Amarikwa, who came to MLS when drafted by the Quakes in 2009 when Yallop was their head coach, leads the team in scoring with eight goals. Magee is second with seven. Tottenham loanee Grant Ward has impressed in several of his games though Yallop isn’t sure if he’ll be back next year. The back line has needed shoring up, so midfielder Jeff Larentowicz has stepped in at centerback the last few games.

Yallop praised the play of keeper Sean Johnson, stranded at times by a rickety defense. “I think Sean Johnson’s had a good season but the team has struggled,” says the coach. “He kept us in games and he’s one of the reasons we’ve had a lot of ties as well but I have to make sure defensively we get stronger by adding a few pieces here and there.”

Among the causes for optimism going forward is rookie Harry Shipp, who leads the team with a modest total of six assists and has also scored six goals. “Harry played right from the start and showed he was good enough to play in the league," says Yallop of the Notre Dame product who has started 24 of 31 games. He led the Irish to a national title less than a year ago.

“The big thing for me is he has the maturity to do that. He’s a great kid that wants to learn and do all the right things for his team. He says all the right things, he doesn’t care about the individual stuff. He just wants to play well and help the team win and that’s a great attribute.

“It’s not like we have to get a whole new team. We just need to add pieces that will put the whole thing together. It’s disappointing when you don’t win, but all in all, the realism is when you change things you’ve got to expect some drop-off and a little bit of breathing room and then some slight growing pains. We’ve had that and I think our guys have dug in, never gave up on the season, and never gave up on each other.”

In the last two games of the season, Yallop will encounter individuals and situations that remind him of how long he’s been in MLS. After playing 14 seasons in England, the Vancouver native finished his pro career in MLS from 1996 to 1998. He started his coaching career with assistant stints for Tampa Bay and D.C. United, then took the head coaching job with San Jose in 2001 and hired former U.S. midfielder Dominic Kinnear as one of his assistants.

On Saturday, Yallop and the Fire return to RFK Stadium to face D.C. United, coached by Ben Olsen, a young player on the D.C. roster during Yallop's tenure. The season ends at home next week against Houston, for which Kinnear will coach his last game before taking up the San Jose job that Yallop filled twice (2001-03, 2008-13) and was dismissed from last year.

“That’s football. You’ve got to move on and you’ve got to accept whatever,” he says of being fired in early June 2013, and replaced by assistant Mark Watson, who has been booted to make room for Kinnear. “I’ve no hard feelings toward San Jose. You move on. I’m pleased to be here in Chicago and I’m doing my best to get this team back to winning ways and back into the playoffs. I’m really enjoying it.

“It’s unbelievable. The funny thing is, guys I coached against [as players] are now coaching. I’ve just turned 50 [last April] so that’s how it goes. But it’s great to see the continuation. The guys who have been in the league appreciate the toughness of our league. It’s a great league to play in and coach in. I think that we all appreciate where we’re at and the opportunity we’ve been given.”