Goodbye To All That: The Juan Quintero Saga Is Over

Days after the Chicago Fire were reportedly on the verge of signing him, only for those reports to be disavowed hours later, the chase for Juan Quintero appears to be over.

The Chicago Tribune reported this weekend that the Fire are out of the running to sign the 24-year-old Colombian forward. Argentine giants River Plate are expected to announce a season-long loan deal with Portuguese club FC Porto— with an option to make the move permanent— within the next few days.

The Tribune is reporting that the Fire had agreed to personal terms with Quintero earlier this winter but that they had not discussed anything with Porto. When those talks did begin, Porto made it clear that they were uninterested in a loan arrangement, while the Fire were unwilling to pay the transfer fee quoted to them. Talks broke down and, this week’s flurry of activity notwithstanding, Porto ultimately agreed to a loan deal with River Plate.

The details are still sketchy but, at first blush, it sounds like either the Fire + MLS didn’t quite handle the negotiations right, Porto were just fucking with us, or Quintero was using a move to MLS as leverage and never wanted to come here in the first place. Either way, this is sure to leave a bad taste in Fire fans’ mouths.

And so, the search for another creative attacking player continues. Good thing we’ve got that nice chunk of allocation money, eh?