Chicago Fire Try to Lure Zidane, a Cast of Millions to MLS

By: Bob | January 24th, 2007

You have to feel a bit sorry for the Chicago Fire and the rest of the teams in Major League Soccer. They know that short of signing Pele to a long-term contract nothing they do will make more of a splash than David Beckham agreeing to play for the LA Galaxy. You can’t blame the Fire for trying though. Today we learn that the club has made an approach to Zinedine Zidane and that they have Henrik Larsson, Brian McBride, Pavel Nedved, Ronado and Claudio Reyna among others on their wish list. What, they’re not interested in Diego Maradona?

According to Fire general manager John Guppy, the club has been in touch with Zidane’s representatives and they received a big no thanks in response.

“We reached out to Zidane,” Guppy said. “But so has every other MLS club. The feedback we’ve all gotten is that he’s retired.”

Outside of Beckham, Zidane might be the most recognizable player to the casual sports fan in the U.S. so you can understand why he would be in demand. You can also understand why a general manager would bring up his name in the media. He was probably asked what the club plans on doing now that Beckham is going to LA. He could respond by talking about some unknown college kid he just drafted or he could drop a name like Zidane’s.

It isn’t all that surprising that the negative answer was also echoed by Larsson who apparently is more interested in returning to his hometown Helsinborg than he is the Windy City. Perhaps the winter weather in Sweden is more to his liking?

All the other names on the list appear to be little more than just that, names. But big names they are at least in the MLS realm. It is interesting to see the effect of the Beckham Rule working its way through MLS as the once difficult to believe thought that international football superstars would actually come to play in the States is not quite as difficult to believe.

It will be worth paying attention to see which team is the next to land a big name (other than Claudio Reyna to the New York Red Bulls) and whether anyone other than the hearty band of soccer fans in the U.S. will take notice.