Over the weekend, Bridgeview mayor Steve Landek was appointed to replace retiring State Senator Lou Viverito. The meeting was held at Toyota Park. Landek will continue to serve as mayor of Bridgeview.
Guillermo Rivera writes about where we are in the allocation order over at Fire Confidential. We are 7th but Guillermo provides some good context as always.
Sam Stejskal has his early impressions of Gaston Puerari over at MLSSoccer.com. Basically so far so good although Sam has some good direct quotes from Puerari.
Lichaj, Kovalenko, PDL, Riot, and Crandall links all after the break.
Downer's Grove's own Eric Lichaj has been loaned out by Aston Villa to Leeds United. Leeds is currently three points out of automatic promotion to the Premier League.
MLSSoccer.com used a Russian source to report that almost Chicago Fire original Dema Kovalenko is retiring. Again, I think it's awkward to run Simon Borg's 'Kick-Off' piece on the MLS website when it uses these foreign sources. It makes it look MLS has no idea what Kovalenko's situation is, they rely on others to tell them.
Chicago Fire Premier President Todd Short announced that Chicago Fire PDL will be playing their games at Evanston Township High School's Lazier Field. I was tempted to run a story with the headline 'Chicago Fire headed to the north side' but decided against it. I think this is a positive move as it will bring the Fire brand to the north suburbs. The stadium sounds like it's nice enough for games without having to open up Toyota Park or have the team relegated to the practice fields.
Ante Cop's goal-scoring heroics for the Chicago Riot a couple of weeks ago will be featured on ABC's The Winners Bracket this Saturday at 4:00 PM. Be sure to check out Riot President & CEO Peter Wilt showing off the team's new third jersey which will be used this Friday against the Omaha Vipers.
As usual Chicago Fire team writer Jeff Crandall keeps rolling out the hits. This time he has an All-In with Bratislav Ristic and a good feature on how Sean Johnson and Jon Conway are working together... among many other pieces. It's hard to keep up with his productivity at times.