Saying Good Bye is Hard: Fire Part Ways with Ríos and Tornaghi

The Chicago Fire announced today that they have declined their option on midfielder Egidio Arévalo Ríos and waived goal keeper Paolo Tornaghi.

The decision on Ríos is not completely unexpected. Ríos had a hefty contract for a defensive midfielder and was taking up a valuable Designated Player tag. It sounded like the Front Office was trying to find a way to finagle a Designated Player tag off of Juan Luis Anangonó (which I'm speculating was an attempt to make keeping Ríos a little more feasible), but were unable to do so. Between taking up a Designated Player tag and getting payed double of what players like Osvaldo Alonso are getting paid, keeping Ríos does not really make a whole lot of sense.

It was nice to have Ríos while we did, and Fire fans wanted to marry him, but the Fire are going to move on with out him.

The move to waive Paolo Tornaghi is a little bit more of a surprise. With Sean Johnson out for a handful of games this past season for U.S. National Team duty, Tornaghi saw a lot of playing time in 2013. Many fans expected that Tornaghi was being groomed to eventually succeed Johnson when SJ moves on to bigger things. Despite having some pretty rough performances this season, the Fire still went through the trouble of securing a green card for Tornaghi. Perhaps Tornaghi's standing with the team was contingent on whether or not Frank Klopas and Javier Leon would still be around for 2014.

With that said, the staff at Hot Time wishes both Ríos and Tornaghi the best of luck in their future pursuits.