BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. – With no new additions to report following the close of the transfer window on Wednesday, Chicago Fire head coach Frank Yallop confirmed he is still hoping to “add a player or two” before the MLS roster freeze kicks in next month.
With no significant transfer activity in Chicago to report on deadline day, attention now turns to out-of-contract players and trades within the league before the official roster freeze on Sept. 15. As such, major targets like free agent Jermaine Jones are still a possibility for the Fire and other clubs still hoping to add to their squads.
“We’re still not done, we’d like to add a player or two,” Yallop told reporters during open training at Toyota Park on Thursday. “But that depends on the next few days. We hope that there’ll be something from either MLS or Jermaine’s people.”
Although reports suggest that Jones rejected a lucrative multi-year deal with the Fire, Yallop confirmed that he and technical director Brian Bliss continue to watch the situation closely.
“The Jones thing is still out there,” he insisted. “We have free transfer [targets] that we can now start to talk to, but having said that we still want to keep a very close eye on the Jones deal to see if we can bring him to Chicago. I’ve had good talks with him and his agent, and they’re very positive. But there’s other people in front of us that have a chance of getting him.
“Once, or if, he signs for the league, then we’ve got to figure out what we’ve got to do to get him to the club.”
- Get the latest Fire news at Chicago-Fire.com
Yallop also revealed that the club was on the brink of bringing in an unnamed player, reportedly forward Silvio Romero, 26, who spent last season with French Ligue 1 outfit Rennes, on a loan from Lanús in his native Argentina.
“We had something really close, but over the last couple of days, it sort of unraveled,” he said. “It would have helped us, so it’s really disappointing. We kept trying to keep it going, but the club pulled out in the end. It wasn’t the player, it wasn’t the financial stuff, it was just the club decided not sell.”
He added: “We thought we had this deal done. It was verbally agreed, all the paperwork was sent over and was ready to go, then [Bliss] gets a phone call that it’s off. It’s disappointing and doesn’t give you much scope to move forward because I felt that would have been a good move for us, but we’ve got to move forward.”
