Klopas getting 'technical' with Chicago Fire personnel

There's no one more identified with Chicago soccer over the past 20 years than Frank Klopas.

Lee Stern might be the Father of Chicago Soccer, but Klopas is Mr. Chicago Soccer.

Not that he really left in the 10 years since he retired as a player, but Klopas is back.

Klopas graduated from Chicago's Mather High School and went straight to play with the Chicago Sting. After a few years playing in Greece, he returned to finish his career with the Fire in 1998, its Major League Soccer and U.S. Open Cup championship season.

Now he is the Fire's new technical director, the first person to hold that position in Chicago. The job, which involves duties sort of like a player personnel director's in the NFL, is commonplace overseas. It's becoming trendy in MLS.

"It's a little bit of everything," Klopas said by telephone from Mexico, where the team is in preseason training for the March 29 opener at Real Salt Lake.

Klopas is learning the ropes, making contacts, building relationships with scouts and agents, checking videotapes, and looking in the nooks and crannies of the soccer world to find the next Fire hero.

"You're always looking to improve the team," said Klopas, noting that foreign players have to fit within the league's structure, including its salary cap and limit on international athletes. "I'm always out there, whether it's talking to agents or traveling."

For now, he said, the team is looking for "something in the middle and something in the back." The Fire feels good about adding Andy Herron and Tomasz Frankowski to a jam-packed front line, but the search isn't over.

"This is the time to be looking at players and improve the team," he said before Monday's league deadline to get under the salary cap and within the roster limit.

Although he's been out of the league for a few years -- he spent two years trading NASDAQ futures at the Merc, then left to build a local youth club, selling his interest in it and then starting a new one, FC Drive, as in Lake Shore Drive and based on the North Side -- Klopas still knows MLS. He still has contacts in the European game also.

"I love it. The job is great. It's not something that came easy," he said.

Having gone all the way to the game's grassroots level before making his comeback to first-division professional soccer, the man has paid his dues and feels he's better for it.

"It's a dream come true," Klopas said of his new job. "I had other opportunities to go with other teams (as an assistant coach), and I never wanted to go because I always felt there was an opportunity with the Fire."

Opportunity knocked this winter. He applied to replace Juan Carlos Osorio as coach but was thrilled to accept the technical director's job, working closely with new coach Denis Hamlett and general manager John Guppy. Now he meets every day after practice with Hamlett to discuss the team's needs.

"There's a lot of respect there," Klopas said of his relationship with Hamlett, who has been with the Fire since its expansion season in 1998. "We've known each other for a long time. We're all working very hard to make this the best franchise in the whole league."

Now that he's got his chance, Klopas wants to make the most of it.

"Everybody wants to be involved at the highest level, but there's only a few teams," he said. "Sometimes things don't happen right away."

Sometimes they work out so a hometown hero finds a second career with his hometown team.

"It's great, I love it and especially to do it in Chicago where my career started," he said.