It was the pebble falling that predicts the avalanche.
“I wonder - with your addition to [the Chicago Fire] - is it a fair expectation to see a clear pathway towards a World Cup competition come out of Chicago?" asked an Agence-France Presse stringer.
The silence, the gasps, the chuckles, the derision - all of it told of a faux pas. Bastian Schweinsteiger, impossibly flummoxed, looking chagrined. While everyone was looking ashamed for the stringer, though, unnoticed in the corner, a dream was born: The Chicago Fire in the World Cup.*
The city of Chicago was not raised to prominence by shy, retiring leadership - its famous ‘Windy’-ness was coined not in reference to breezes off the lake, but to the tendency of prominent city leaders to make wild promises their pride insisted on producing.