The "Door Number Two" Problem

So, Lider Marmol is gone from the Fire, and Luis is trying to turn it into some sort of...I don't know what, exactly. If you care that Marmol is gone, and that he might be the difference between reaching the Eastern Conference Finals and winning the championship, well, congratulations, you're an idiot.

The Fire signed a player who perhaps showed some promise (or, alternately, just to piss off Juan Carlos Osorio, which would be fine by me). That player was unable to crack the lineup. That player left. It happens every year, in every sport. Sure, it happened twice for the Fire last year with international signings. That's certainly not unprecedented, either.

I, for one, don't even know what position Marmol was best at. If he was a central defensive midfielder, what we can take from this is that he wasn't as good as Logan Pause or John Thorrington. I happen to like both of those players a lot, so I can't argue with that. If he was a central defender, we can assume he wasn't as good at Baky Soumare or Wilman Conde. Neither of these are terribly controversial assumptions.

This is classic fan behavior. If you're disappointed with the result -- and, in this case, that result was not winning MLS Cup -- and Marmol did not contribute at all, then you make the tenuous assumption that playing him (or Tomasz Frankowski) more often would have made the difference. On Let's Make A Deal, you know that, if the prize isn't behind one door, it has to be behind one of the others. Not so here, where any claim that you know what would happen if Marmol started every match is complete and utter bullshit. Period. This is not debatable. You don't know, and I'm sorry, the chances are not good that you're a better judge of talent than a professional coaching staff who sees these players every day.

Look, this all happened with Ryan Futagaki five years ago, and so Lider Marmol is just this year's model. It's simply the way fans' dissatisfaction with their team manifests itself, and that's fine. Could that roster spot, or that salary space, been put to better use? Maybe, but if so, where? Much like the draft needs for Chicago, there aren't really any spots in the starting lineup that could have been drastically improved. Maybe Thorrington or Prideaux, but they both performed well above expectations. Maybe Pause, but I seriously doubt there was anyone out there who would be that big of an improvement at a reasonable price. I'd argue you could do better than Wilman Conde pretty easily, but that's a different soap box. The rest of your starters are Busch, Soumare, Segares, Rolfe, Mapp (or Pappa), Blanco and McBride.

There's also the small matter of Marmol looking just flat-out awful when he did get first-team minutes. Just because Ives and JCO like the guy doesn't necessarily make it so. Both of those guys think Carlos Mendes is a quality defender.

Personally, I'm going to miss "The Special One" much more than I'm going to miss "Not Carlos" Marmol.