Travel. It’s one of the biggest complaints foreign players
make about coming to Major League Soccer. Sure there’s playing during the
summer months and the pesky turf monster, but those are match conditions, every
player has at least had some form of familiarity with.
Amount of travel is one that’s unique to few other domestic
leagues around the world, with the Russian and Chinese Premier Leagues being
the best possible travel comparisons. Though even in the case of Russia, Tom
Tomsk is the only club currently involved in this year’s Premier League located
east of the Ural Mountains.
In any case, travel in Major League Soccer can be grueling.
The haul has become more difficult in the past few years with a combination of
expansion of three teams to North America’s Cascade region and the extension of
team’s league campaigns from 30 to 34 regular season matches. Factor U.S. Open
Cup qualifying and tournament matches, the odd reserve game and the month on
the road for preseason and the flights add up.
No stranger to the rigors of MLS travel, Chicago Fire
captain Logan Pause has watched the league grow back from 10 teams following
contraction to a much healthier landscape with 18 clubs in two countries and
another one joining next year.
“As the years go on it becomes harder in terms of now having
a wife and family here and this is home, but you also know what to expect,”
said Pause Tuesday.
Pause’s comment comes after a long jaunt back and forth to
Vancouver which is approximately 4400 miles round trip from Chicago. Back in the
Windy City for the week, Pause will lead his team to the opposite coast for a
Saturday match against New York, approximately 1560 miles round trip.
“It’s not easy especially with how big our country is,
there’s a lot of travel but you look at some of the other teams on the coasts –
us being centrally located, we have it easy compared to the others.”
Click on the image above to see full size travel map
Point taken Logan. As a major hub city located roughly in
the middle of the United States, Chicago may be the best base city for travel
in Major League Soccer.
Even still, a few daunting trips have come about for the
Fire this year, first with an easy enough trip to Philadelphia (759 miles from
Chicago) on May 21 which saw the team then fly 2,927 miles cross-country to
play a U.S. Open Cup play-in match vs. San Jose on May 24, before flying 2,162
miles back from NorCal to the Windy City the following day. In all, the team traveled
over 5,800 miles in a five-day span.
Maybe worse was the two weeks of back –to-back matches in
Los Angeles to begin the month of July. Playing Chivas USA on July 2 and The
Home Depot Center, the Fire returned to Chicago at midweek for a Reserve match
against FC Dallas on July 5. They flew back out to Southern California two days
later for a match against the LA Galaxy on July 9. In total, the two
round-trips racked up 8,112 miles for the team in a week’s time.
Having just moved into a tie for second with Zach Thornton
on the club’s all-time regular season appearance list (215), Pause has played
in 135 away matches across all competitions since joining the Fire in 2003.
Asked to estimate how many miles the team has traversed this
season, the Fire captain guessed 25,000.
In reality, the team has traveled approximately 37,401 miles
through training camp and all competitive matches in 2011. When factoring in
scheduled games through the end of 2011, the team will at least end up at 49,661
miles traveled since first departing for training camp in Ave Maria, FL on
February 14.
“37,000 miles is a lot,” said Pause. “That might get my wife
and I a nice little trip at the end of the year.”
Jeff Crandall is the
Team Writer for the Chicago Fire. Follow him on Twitter @JefeCrandall.