Can Chicago support more pro soccer? Does North Side want its own team?

Does professional soccer in this country have visions of playing off the South Side/North Side split that exists in our city – with each side having its own team to root for?

Architectural rendering of new stadium to attract Amazon.com, United Soccer League to Chicago

Some people seem to have such dreams, although it’s questionable whether the baseball dichotomy that exists in Chicago could ever be recreated for another sport.

ADMITTEDLY, THIS IS all theoretical.

It comes about because part of the Chicago proposal for trying to encourage Amazon.com to build their second corporate headquarters here is to erect a stadium at a site along the Chicago River’s north branch on the fringes of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

It’s meant to enhance the neighborhood that could be the site of the Amazon.com facility – an effort to make it a hip and happening place (and yes, I suspect the only people who would find this upgrade worthy are the types who would use terms like “hip” and “happening”).

Concerts could be held there, and there’s talk of trying to get the United Soccer League to expand its operations with a team in Chicago that could actually play its games there.

IT SOUNDS NICE, except that Chicago already has a professional soccer team – the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. Which isn’t exactly an attendance-leader for the league, and usually provides ammunition for the NASCAR-type mentality people who want to think soccer is too foreign to be worthy of any support on the sporting scene.

The existing Toyota Park of southwest suburban Bridgeview

The Fire, when they originally were created back in the 1990s, played their matches at Soldier Field. But when that stadium was renovated into its current state, the Fire used the need to find a new home as an excuse to get their own stadium.

Which they now have out in the southwest suburb of Bridgeview. I’ve been to Toyota Park for a few matches. It’s actually a nice facility, and does the team some credit to have it available at their control – unlike Soldier Field, where the Chicago Park District always made it clear the Chicago Bears were the primary tenant and others would have to play second-fiddle.

But it has created a situation where some people living in the northern reaches of the Chicago area want to believe that a team playing its games at 71^st Street and Harlem Avenue is too distant.

Is 20 years of existence strong enough for Fire?

WHO WANTS TO have to travel south, particularly that far south, to see a soccer match?

Although I’d point out (as someone native to the South Side and surrounding suburbs) that the region stretches as far south as 236^th Street before you reach the southernmost tip of Cook County.

But there’s speculation that a United Soccer League franchise based on the north side, particularly if on the fringe of a trendy, upscale neighborhood, could try to market itself as an alternative. Even though the United Soccer League technically is a minor league that ranks below Major League Soccer on the sporting scene.

Chgo soccer hasn't been same since Sting ceased to exist

Some could argue we have the same scene with baseball, where the Chicago White Sox have been ever since their creation in 1900 a team that marketed itself as the face of the South Side, and with the Cubs upon their moving to what is now Wrigley Field back in 1916 as the North Side team.

BUT LIKE I said, it was a conscious decision of Charles Comiskey that he had the Sout’ Side team. The Fire would become the South Side team of default, with the hoity-toity types of the North lakefront deciding to watch soccer matches in their own neighborhoods – that is, if they ever get such an urge.

Personally, I played a little soccer in high school (no, I wasn’t any good at it), and my own memories also included rooting for the Chicago Sting of old – that now-defunct team that actually won North American Soccer League championships in 1981 and 1984. To me, I’d like to have the Sting back, rather than any of these new teams.

White Sox fans still think "Ugh!"

But that’s not about to happen. We’ll have to see what becomes of this new team talk – particularly if Amazon.com winds up choosing some other city and the motivation for building a new stadium up north withers away.

There would be one interesting bit – since a North Side team would technically be a minor league club, and it would create the state where players would “move up” to the Chicago Fire down south. Similar to when Ron Santo was traded from the Cubs to the White Sox in 1974 and was greeted with fan banners reading, “Ron Santo, Welcome to the Major Leagues.”

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